Exploitation of desilylation chemistry in tailor-made functionalization on diverse surfaces

Interface engineering to attain a uniform and compact self-assembled monolayer at atomically flat surfaces plays a crucial role in the bottom-up fabrication of organic molecular devices. Here we report a promising and operationally simple approach for modification/functionalization not only at ultraflat single-crystal metal surfaces, M(111) (M=Au, Pt, Pd, Rh and Ir) but also at the highly oriented pyrolytic graphite surface, upon efficient in situ cleavage of trimethylsilyl end groups of the molecules. The obtained self-assembled monolayers are ultrastable within a wide potential window. The carbon–surface bonding on various substrates is confirmed by shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Application of this strategy in tuning surface wettability is also demonstrated. The most valuable finding is that a combination of the desilylation with the click chemistry represents an efficient method for covalent and tailor-made functionalization of diverse surfaces.