On-Surface Dual-Response Structural Transformations of Guanine Molecules and Fe Atoms

Structural transformation of metal-organic nanostructures holds great promise for structural diversity and flexibility and opens the way towards an adaptive and evolutive chemistry owing to the dynamic characteristic of coordination bonds. It is thus generally interesting and also challenging to develop systems showing reversible structural transformations which involve multiple metal-organic motifs on surfaces. Here, we have successfully constructed a system that presents structural transformations on a solid surface, in which controllable formation of multiple metal-organic nanostructures (with different coordination binding modes by use of distinct binding sites) in response to both metal atoms and molecules is achieved at room temperature (RT) under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions. The key to making these interconversions successful is the intrinsic dynamic characteristic of coordination bonds together with the coordination priority and diversity.