Surface Organic Nanostructures Mediated by Extrinsic Components: from Assembly to Reaction

Surface organic nanostructures demonstrate great potential across multidisciplinary fields ranging from molecular electronics to energy conversion and storage. In the regime of surface chemistry, their preparation generally relies on intrinsic components originally involved in the molecule-substrate systems to drive molecular assembly and reaction. The recent paradigm shift employs extrinsic components as functional mediators to precisely regulate nanostructure formation pathways and the resulting molecular nanostructures. This review highlights three categories of extrinsic modulators, including small gas molecules, metals, and their combinations, that allow the construction and modification of surface organic nanostructures through tailored assembly and reaction. In addition, their detailed roles and regulatory mechanisms at the single-molecule level are also discussed. This emerging extrinsic-components-mediated assembly and reaction methodology displayed herein enriches the preparation toolbox for surface organic nanostructures and further allows the modification of their physicochemical properties, opening new frontiers in supramolecular engineering, nanomaterials development, etc.