Donor/acceptor complex of triphenylene and trinitrotoluene on Au(111): a scanning tunneling microscopy study

The co-adsorption of trinitrotoluene (TNT), a typical pi-electron acceptor, and triphenylene (TP), a typical pi-electron donor, on a Au(111) surface was investigated by in situ Electrochemical Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (ECSTM). DFT calculations proved that parallelly stacked and well-overlapped TP and TNT molecules can form Donor-Acceptor dyads through intermolecular pi-pi charge transfer, which agree well with the experimental results in the present work.