The on-surface synthesis scheme for joining molecular building blocks by strong covalent bonds has received tremendous interest in the last years: it offers advanced molecular surface nanostructures with enhanced chemical and thermal stability than structures prepared from non-covalent self-assembly. One challenge is to identify suitable organic reactions that will readily proceed under UHV conditions with the reactants confined on a surface.We employed STM and XPS to study the the �click-reaction� � the Cu-catalyzed Huisgen cycloaddition � between terminal alkyne (9-ethynylphenanthrene) and azide (4-azidobiphenyl) molecules on Cu(111).  We chose this substrate in our experiments in order to mimic the Cu-catalyst employed in standard procedures to run this reaction (in solution).  We find evidence that the reaction proceeds under these restrictive conditions. Interestingly, our data suggest the presence of more than one single conformer of the product, despite reports that solid copper catalyzes the reaction and thus should yield only a single regio-isomer.

On-surface "click-chemistry"

244th National Meeting (2012)

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