Assembly of Chiral Amino-Acids at Surfaces from a Single Molecule Perspective: Proline on Cu(110)

Journal article, 2011

We present a molecule-by-molecule mapping of an amino-acid monolayer on a Cu(110) surface in which individual molecular configuration, bonding and adsorption footprints are identified. This detailed mapping provides direct evidence that the (4 x 2) structures of enantiopure and racemic proline are governed by a strict heterochiral adsorption footprint template. For the racemic system this has an interesting consequence, namely that it leads to a 2-D random solid solution, a situation that is rarely encountered in 3-D.