Ass.Prof. Dr. Laerte Patera

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are materials formed by the linkage of organic building blocks to create periodic structures with predefined topologies. This peculiar characteristic enables the construction of tailor-made systems for applications in (photo-)catalysis and optoelectronics.
In our lab, we synthetize atomically thin COFs with tailored structures. Novel approaches for the synthesis of extended crystallites with domain sizes up to several micrometers are currently under development. The formation of extended COFs is achieved through on-surface synthesis, which makes use of atomically flat surfaces as templates to confine polymerization reactions in two dimensions. The 2D-COFs are characterized at the atomic scale by high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), shedding light onto the reaction pathways leading to the growth of COFs.

Excitons are fundamental light-induced excitations, composed of bound electron-hole pairs. While they lie at the heart of photochemistry, their short-lived nature makes their experimental study a real challenge.
In the context of the recently awarded ERC starting grant (WEPOF), we are working on novel imaging techniques based on scanning probe microscopy to resolve photoexcited states in organic frameworks.

Over the past few years, single-site catalysts have attracted special attention in the field of heterogeneous catalysis, due to their unique chemical activity and selectivity.
By combining scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and near-ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (NAP-XPS), we study the mechanisms governing single-site catalyzed polymerization in model systems under realistic reaction conditions.