title: Quantifying thiol-gold interactions towards the efficient strength control.
abstract: The strength of the thiol-gold interactions provides the basis to fabricate robust self-assembled monolayers for diverse applications. Investigation on the stability of thiol-gold interactions has thus become a hot topic. Here we use atomic force microscopy to quantify the stability of individual thiol-gold contacts formed both by isolated single thiols and in self-assembled monolayers on gold surface. Our results show that the oxidized gold surface can enhance greatly the stability of gold-thiol contacts. In addition, the shift of binding modes from a coordinate bond to a covalent bond with the change in environmental pH and interaction time has been observed experimentally. Furthermore, isolated thiol-gold contact is found to be more stable than that in self-assembled monolayers. Our findings revealed mechanisms to control the strength of thiol-gold contacts and will help guide the design of thiol-gold contacts for a variety of practical applications.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Yurui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z1.
authors.forename: Hongbin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Wenke
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang