Site-specific chemistry directed by a bifunctional nanostructured surface

Using the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), we have created a bifunctional nanostructured surface which consists of parallel stripes of gold atoms on the Au(111) substrate. Each stripe has two parallel step-edges separated by a few nanometers in distance. The two step-edges have very different binding properties to molecules, and they are able to separate C(60) molecules into two types of adsorbed structures, giving rise to a controlled formation of two-dimensional closely spaced multiple molecular nanostructures.