Going beyond the Surface: a Glance inside Smart Conducting Molecular Surfaces through a Multitechnique Approach

Conducting organic polymers, COPs, are smart materials that merge some of the most interesting properties of common polymers (e.g. flexibility, processability, etc.) with high electrical conductivity of metals. Research in this field is currently attracting increasing attention, since these innovative materials are very promising for a great variety of applications, from energetics to electronics and sensoristics, even from an industrial point of view. Chirality makes COPs even smarter materials, opening the way to enantioselective electroanalysis/electrosynthesis. In particular the “inherent chirality” concept proposed by our groups some years ago actually represented a breakthrough, significantly improving all other literature approaches so far proposed, making possible deposition of conducting homochiral oligomeric films acting as effective, efficient and robust enantioselectors toward a great variety of chiral analytes, in different media.. The further natural step is the comprehension of the actual working mechanism of these intelligent surfaces. To reach such intriguing target a deep and multivariate characterization is mandatory, to reveal as much properties as possible that could be finally combined to depict a complete portrait of these conducting inherently chiral films. In this short presentation we will glance at these smart chiral conducting molecular surfaces, following an ideal tour from outside (i.e. surface appearance) to their inner parts (i.e. optical and electronic features). The support of Fondazione Cariplo/Regione Lombardia (Project 2016-0923) and SmartMatLab are gratefully acknowledged.