Nanofabrication is a technology which is expected to become of fundamental importance in future device manufacturing. Currently, photolithography is the technique commonly used to construct patterned surfaces; however, it is limited by the wavelength of the illuminating source. Spontaneous self-assembly of molecules or particles on a surface is a simple, versatile and less time consuming alternative. To date, however, this approach has been generally limited to micrometer-sized areas and it is prone to producing defects. Recently, examples have appeared in literature in which micrometer sized particles were used to create well-defined patterns on a larger scale. We have designed and synthesized porphyrin trimer 1 (Figure 1A), which in solution self-assembles into a columnar supramolecular polymer. We demonstrated that upon drop-casting a dilute solution of 1 (1 x 10~(-6)) on a mica surface, extended periodic patterns up to 1mm size were formed on the surface (Figure 1B).
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