Ordering Fullerenes at the Nanometer Scale on Solid Surfaces

Different strategies followed for the incorporation of fullerene molecules onto solid surfaces are reviewed. These strategies include site-selective adsorption of fullerene or fullerene derivatives on a bare metals, generation of a regular network of an organic molecule on the surface, and formation of lateral superlattices at a nanometer scale. The tendency toward faceting of the Au (433) vicinal surface is used with regular 4 nm wide terraces separated by bunches of 1.4 nm terracess to modify the atomic structure of some metal surfaces to fabricate long and narrow fullerene stripes. A 2D supramolecular structure from macrocycle is generated and its codeposition with fullerenes on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) is studied. A coadsorbed system formed by acridine-9-carboxylic acid (ACA) and fullerene C 60 on Ag(111) is used for the formation of the intermixed structures that depend on the balance between C 60-ACA-Ag(111) interactions.