Racemic versus enantiopure alanine on Cu(110): an experimental study

The adsorption of racemic alanine on the Cu(110) surface has been compared to that of enantiopure alanine using low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy (RAIRS), and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). No evidence of chiral resolution at the surface was observed for the racemic system, indicating that the formation of separate enantiopure areas is not preferred. Also, in contrast to the enantiopure system, no chirally organized phase was observed for the racemic system. LEED shows that both systems display a common (3 x 2) phase at high coverage. However, the pathway and kinetic barriers to this phase differ markedly for the racemic and the enantiopure systems, with the racemic (3 x 2) appearing at a temperature that is more than 100 K below that required for the enantiopure system. In addition, we report intriguing complexities for the (3 x 2) LEED structure that is ubiquitous in amino acid/Cu(110) systems. First, a common (3 x 2) pattern with a zigzag distortion can be associated with both the racemic and enantiopure systems. For the racemic system, the coverage can be increased further to give a "true" (3 x 2) LEED pattern, which is a transformation that is impossible to enact for the enantiopure system. Most importantly, STM images of the "distorted" and "true" (3 x 2) structures created in the racemic system show subtle differences with neither arrangement being fully periodic over distances greater than a few molecules. Thus, the (3 x 2) phase appears to be more complicated than at first indicated and will require more complex models for a full interpretation.