Tuning Intermolecular Charge Transfer in Donor–Acceptor Two-Dimensional Crystals on Metal Surfaces

Organic charge transfer (CT) compounds display a wide range of exotic electronic properties (charge-density wave stabilization, Peierls transitions, etc.) depending on the amount of charge transferred from the donor (D) to the acceptor (A) species. A complete exploration of the complex electronic phase diagrams for such compounds would thus require methods to systematically tune the amount of charge exchanged in the CT process. This has proven however challenging in the past: chemical functionalization of the constituent molecules can also affect the packing of the molecular units in the crystal, whereas changing D:A stoichiometry is often not possible in the bulk. Interestingly, it was recently found that multiple stoichiometries can actually be achieved by codeposition of different amounts of D and A molecules on metal surfaces. The question, however, of whether CT processes between D and A molecules can be tuned with the D:A ratio in such mixtures has not yet been studied, and it is no trivial matter, ...