C60/corannulene on Cu(110): a surface-supported bistable buckybowl-buckyball host-guest system.
Corannulene (COR) buckybowls were proposed as near ideal hosts for fullerene C60, but direct complexation of C60 and COR has remained a challenge in supramolecular chemistry. We report the formation of surface-supported COR-C60 host-guest complexes by deposition of C60 onto a COR lattice on Cu(110). Variable-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy studies reveal two distinctly different states of C60 on the COR host lattice, with different binding energies and bowl-ball separations. The transition from a weakly bound precursor state to a strongly bound host-guest complex is found to be thermally activated. Simple model calculations show that this bistability originates from a subtle interplay between homo- and heteromolecular interactions.
Xiao
Wende
W
nanotech@surfaces Laboratory, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, Feuerwerkerstrasse 39, 3602 Thun, Switzerland.
Passerone
Daniele
D
Ruffieux
Pascal
P
Aït-Mansour
Kamel
K
Gröning
Oliver
O
Tosatti
Erio
E
Siegel
Jay S
JS
Fasel
Roman
R