10-02 :: February 2010
nanotimes
37
News in Brief
Molecular Self-organization //
A New Approach to Optimizing Molecular Self-organization
R
esearchers led by Dr. Bianca Hermann, a “With the help of the model, we can generate a wide
physicist from the Center for Nanoscience variety of patterns that reproduce surprisingly well
(CeNS) at LMU Munich, reports a significant bre- the arrangements observed experimentally,” says
akthrough with self-organization: By combining sta- Dr. Hermann. “We want to extend this approach to
tistical physics and detailed simulations with images other surface symmetries.”
obtained by scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM),
the team has been able to formulate a simple model To develop the new molecular-interaction site mo-
that can predict the patterns observed. del, Dr. Herrmann’s group collaborated with Priv.
Doz. Dr. Thomas Franosch und Professor Erwin Frey
STM images of self-organi-
zed monolayers of Fréchet
dendrons display a varie-
ty of 2D ordering motifs,
which are influenced by
engineering the molecular
interactions. An interaction-
site model condenses
the essential molecular
properties determined by
molecular mechanics (MM)
modeling, which in a Monte
Carlo approach successfully
predicts the various orde-
ring motifs. This confirms
that geometry as well as a
few salient weak interaction
sites encode these structural
motifs.
© Dr. B.A. Hermann /
WMI, Academy of Science
and Humanities