Solvent Hydrogen Bonding Determines Adsorption Geometry of Trimesic Acid on Cu
Anusha Lalitha, Qixuan Li, Marialore Sulpizi, Denis Andrienko, Katrin F. Domke · 2026
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Description
Lalitha and colleagues report a 2026 study of how a widely used molecular linker, trimesic acid, sits on copper surfaces. Which way such molecules face decides how a surface behaves, and experts had long disagreed on this one's pose. The team combined tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, a laser method that reads single spots, with simulations of atoms and solvent.
The solvent turned out to decide the pose. Hydrogen bonding between solvent and molecule tips the balance between flat and upright forms. The energy gap between the two is tiny, about a quarter of an electron volt in their calculations. That small margin explains why past studies, done in different environments, reached opposite answers. Measuring the wet interface directly is essential for layers that must work in real liquids.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Anusha Lalitha, Qixuan Li, Marialore Sulpizi, Denis Andrienko, Katrin F. Domke |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 23 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |