Advances in supramolecularly assembled nanostructures of fullerenes and porphyrins at surfaces

The 'bottom-up' strategy is an attractive and promising approach for the construction of nanoarchitectures. Supramolecular assemblies based on non-covalent interactions have been explored in an attempt to control surface properties. In this minireview, we focus on advances made in the past three years in the field of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) on supramolecular assembly and the function of porphyrins, phthalocyanines, and fullerenes, non-covalently bound on metal single crystal surfaces. Well-defined adlayers, consisting of porphyrin and phthalocyanine for the design of supramolecular nanoarchitectures, supramolecular traps of C-60 on hydrogen bond-networks, a unique approach for controlling molecular orientation by a 1: 1 supramolecularly assembled film consisting of C-60 and the related derivatives and metallooctaethylporphyrins, and nanoapplications of fullerenes, either induced by tip manipulation or driven by thermal fluctuations at surfaces, were clearly visualized by STM. Copyright (C) 2007 Society of Porphyrins & Phthalocyanines.