Deposition and Self-Assembly of Large Magnetic Molecules

We have used two different unconventional preparation techniques, namely, pulse injection and rapid heating, to deposit large trinuclear transition-metal complexes onto a Au(111) surface under ultrahigh-vacuum conditions. Both techniques turn out to provide a clean preparation and leave the molecules intact upon deposition. While pulse injection leads to isolated molecules on the surface, rapid heating yields close-packed ordered monolayer islands. From a comparison of topographies and electronic structures we conclude that both molecule–substrate and intermolecular interactions are relatively weak. We discuss the reasons for the appearance of the different structures and give a detailed comparison of both deposition techniques which allows us to evaluate their specific advantages and drawbacks. Our results show that these relatively simple and cost-efficient preparation techniques are suitable for nanoscale studies of large molecules such as single-molecule magnets.