Spontaneous Assembly of Organic Thiocyanates on Gold Sufaces. Alternative Precursors for Gold Thiolate Assemblies

Abstract

Thiolate self-assembly on gold has proven to be a valuable technique for assembling monolayers on a wide variety of substrates. However, the oxidative instability of the thiols, especially aromatic thiols and α,ω-dithiols, presents several difficulties. Shown here is that thiocyanates, easily synthesized stable thiol derivatives, can be directly assembled on gold surfaces with no auxiliary reagents required. Assembly is complete in 24 h and leaves a similar gold thiolate structure as seen in typical thiol self-assembled monolayers.