| Abstract
| - We define “protopolymer” to mean that the monomer units of a polymer are together and aligned,but are not yet reacted to their final form, the polymer. We have created, observed, and manipulated thisnew chemical state in linear chains of phenylene on Cu{111} at low temperature. We demonstrate thatprotopolyphenylene forms by manipulating individual monomer units out of the chains using a scanningtunneling microscope. Both the bare and the phenylene-covered Cu{111} surface can serve as an extendedcatalytic active site to bring together and to align the monomer phenylene units formed from the dissociativechemisorption of p-diiodobenzene. When short segments of protopolymer chains are moved on thephenylene-covered surface, the intermolecular interactions are sufficiently strong to realign the chains innew locations. The alignment due to these interactions may be used in the controlled growth and assembly,as well as for the simplified manipulation of complex, hierarchical structures.
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