Square-micrometer-sized, free-standing organometallic sheets and their square-centimeter-sized multilayers on solid substrates.

Oligofunctional terpyridine-based monomers are spread at an air/water interface, where they are connected with transition metal salts such as Fe(II) into mechanically coherent monolayer sheets of macroscopic dimension. The conversions of these processes are determined by XPS for several monomer/metal ion combinations. The sheets are transferred onto TEM grids, the 20 × 20 square micrometer sized holes of which can be spanned. AFM indentation experiments provide in-plane elastic moduli which are compared with naturally occurring sheets such as graphene. The new organometallic sheets are also used to create multilayer assemblies on square centimeter length scales on solid substrates. Finally some directions are provided where this research can lead to in future and where its application potential lies.