Tailoring molecular nano-architectures on metallic surfaces

One way to improve the performance of electronic devices is to make them smaller. Such approach has been used for the production of semiconductor electronic devices during the last decades. Nowadays this scaling down approach is reaching a level at which many physical phenomena, including insufficient insulation between comprising electronic components, adversely affect the performance of the devices. Therefore, it is important to find new approaches for production of electronic devices. The work described in this thesis elaborate on an alternative approach which could be used for production of molecular nanoelectronic devices. We successfully employ organic molecules as well as metal atoms as building blocks to fabricate functional metal-organic networks on metallic surfaces in a controllable manner. We show how the chemical and electronic properties of the surfaces can be modified by proper selection of the building blocks, thereby paving the path towards the fabrication of future molecular nanoelectronic devices