“We have discovered a completely new approach to producing complex materials from simple organic building blocks,” Klappenberger and Ruben summarize. The working group headed by Mario Ruben at KIT’s Institute of Nanotechnology was responsible for the tailored selective synthesis and characterization of multinuclear molecular complexes serving as tessellation building blocks. In the language of geometry, this pattern is referred to as a semiregular 3.4.6.4 tessellation. Heat treatment then sets in motion a series of chemical processes, producing a novel, significantly larger building block which then forms a complex layer with small hexagonal, rectangular and triangular pores virtually automatically and self-organized. On a silver substrate, this molecule forms a regular network with large hexagonal meshes. Their production requires large molecular building blocks that are not compatible with traditional manufacturing processes.Ĭomplex Tessellations through Self-organizationĪn international team led by Professors Florian Klappenberger and Johannes Barth at the Chair of Experimental Physics of TUM, as well as Professor Mario Ruben at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, have now made a breakthrough in a class of supramolecular networks: They got organic molecules to combine into larger building blocks with a complex tiling formed in a self-organized manner.Īs a starting compound, they used ethynyl iodophenanthrene, which is an easy-to-handle organic molecule comprising three coupled carbon rings with an iodine and an alkyne end. It is, however, difficult to manufacture such materials. Such structures are often associated with very special and desirable properties, for example outstanding electrical conductivity, special light reflection, or extreme mechanical strength. Materials can also exhibit tiling characteristics. These are the so-called Archimedean tessellations or tilings.įrom simple organic molecules, the new method forms a complex semi-regular 3.4.6.4 tessellation. Considerably more and significantly more complex but still regular patterns are possible with two or more tile shapes. Only a few basic geometric shapes lend themselves to covering a surface without overlaps or gaps using uniformly shaped tiles: Triangles, rectangles, and hexagons. In the process, simple organic molecules are combined into larger components which form the complex semiregular patterns. Such materials are interesting because they often possess extraordinary properties. The team of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Technische Universität München (TUM) has discovered a reaction path which produces exotic layers with semiregular structures from simple two-dimensional networks. In Nature Chemistry, researchers of KIT and TUM explain how molecules form complex tessellations through self-organization. Selective generation of such structures requires large molecular building blocks which mostly are not compatible with the conventional manufacturing processes. Materials with tessellations can, for example, be characterized by an outstanding electrical conductivity, a special light reflection, or an extreme mechanical strength. But microstructured parquetings, or rather tessellations, may occur in materials as well. Floor parquetings are typically found in living rooms.
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