Photochemical Glaser Coupling at Metal Surfaces

On-surface synthesis is a powerful cutting-edge technology to build up covalently bound nanostructures directly at surfaces which enables the preparation of highly advanced one- or two-dimensional materials. In these processes, bond formation generally occurs by thermal activation of the precursor building blocks. In this Article we report the light-induced homocoupling of aryl-alkynes (Glaser coupling) at metal surfaces. Such photochemical approaches are of particular importance as potentially orthogonal processes to thermal on-surface reactions