Surface-Induced Selection During In Situ Photoswitching at the Solid/Liquid Interface

Sara Bonacchi, Mohamed El Garah, Artur Ciesielski, Martin Herder, Simone Conti, Marco Cecchini, Stefan Hecht, and Paolo Samorì

Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2015, 54(16), pp 4865–4869.
DOI:10.1002/anie.201412215 | Find on RG

Surface-Induced Selection During In Situ Photoswitching at the Solid/Liquid Interface

Abstract:

Here we report for the first time a submolecularly resolved scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) study at the solid/liquid interface of the in situ reversible interconversion between two isomers of a diarylethene photoswitch, that is, open and closed form, self-assembled on a graphite surface. Prolonged irradiation with UV light led to the in situ irreversible formation of another isomer as by-product of the reaction, which due to its preferential physisorption accumulates at the surface. By making use of a simple yet powerful thermodynamic model we provide a quantitative description for the observed surface-induced selection of one isomeric form.