Coverage-dependent study of nickel tetraphenyl-porphyrin on Au(332) and Au(788)

The coverage-dependent self-assembly of Nickel-tetraphenyl porphyins on Gold vicinal surfaces was studied by scanning tunneling microscopy. On Au(788) the molecular is square-shaped, following symmetry. Au(332) molecules nucleate in a parallelogram lattice for monolayer coverage and squared multilayer coverage. Depending surface adopt either saddle shaped or more planar conformation. experiments demonstrate that crystallographic direction, terrace sizes are important establishing different assembly geometries.