The formation of enantiospecific phases on a Cu{110} surface

Both R- and S- phenylglycine and a quantitatively well defined mixture of the two enantiomers have been studied on Cu{110} surfaces. At saturation coverage, the molecules form well ordered, chiral structures with a chiral unit cell which ensures that the low energy electron diffraction ( LEED) patterns of the two enantiomers are readily differentiated. Comparison is made with analogous structures observed for the non-chiral species glycine and R-, S-alanine adsorbed on Cu{110}.