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Author: srschofield

_posts/2026-03-09-Georgia-Giessen-Visit.md

@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ Georgia joined the group to work on the chemical modification of the Ge(001) sur
 
 Michael Dürr is one of the leading experts in the organic functionalisation of silicon surfaces, and his group has developed deep expertise in controlling how molecules adsorb, diffuse, and react on Si(001). A visit to his laboratory offered Georgia a natural opportunity to broaden her skill set in a closely related but distinct area of surface chemistry, and to experience a different research environment. During her six weeks in Gießen, Georgia joined one of Michael's students to begin an investigation of coronene adsorption on silicon. Coronene is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon consisting of seven fused benzene rings and is an attractive building block for bottom-up molecular electronics. The longer-term vision motivating this work is to use the hydrogen-terminated Si(001) surface as a template on which coronene molecules can diffuse and interact, ultimately coupling together to form extended, graphene-like molecular architectures through on-surface synthesis. Such an approach could, in principle, allow the controlled creation of structured organic overlayers with well-defined electronic properties. The initial focus of the project was more foundational: to establish reliable conditions for depositing coronene onto the surface and to characterise the resulting adlayer. Working alongside Michael's student, Georgia carried out coronene evaporation onto the clean Si(001) surface and obtained some intriguing early results that she is now analysing back in London.
 
-Prior STM studies have already established that coronene chemisorbs on the clean Si(001)-2×1 surface through the formation of covalent Si–C bonds with the underlying dimer rows, with the molecule adopting a slightly buckled, saddle-like geometry in its most common adsorption configuration [Suzuki *et al.*, *J. Chem. Phys.* **124**, 054701 (2006)]. That work identified three distinct adsorption sites and showed, perhaps surprisingly, that coronene adsorbs randomly at room temperature and does not form ordered two-dimensional islands. Despite this foundation, the detailed adsorption chemistry of coronene on silicon surfaces is not yet fully understood, and there remains considerable scope for new experiments to clarify the role of surface preparation, coverage, and temperature in determining molecular ordering and reactivity.
+Prior STM studies have already established that coronene chemisorbs on the clean Si(001)-2×1 surface through the formation of covalent Si–C bonds with the underlying dimer rows, with the molecule adopting a slightly buckled, saddle-like geometry in its most common adsorption configuration [Suzuki *et al.*, *J. Chem. Phys.* **124**, 054701 (2006)]. That work identified three distinct adsorption sites and showed that coronene adsorbs randomly at room temperature and does not form two-dimensional islands. Despite this foundation, the detailed adsorption chemistry of coronene on silicon surfaces is not yet fully understood, and there remains considerable scope for new experiments to clarify the role of surface preparation, coverage, and temperature in determining molecular ordering and reactivity.
 
 <figure class="blog-image">
   <img src="{{ '/images/blog/2026/2026-03-09-Georgia-Giessen-Visit-Suzuki2006-Fig2.png' | relative_url }}" alt="STM images and DFT structure of coronene on Si(001) from Suzuki et al. 2006">