Fresh perspectives for surface coordination chemistry

Surface coordination chemistry has been traditionally associated with analogies between metal–ligand bonding in coordination compounds and chemisorptive interactions, the anchoring of metal complexes or other units for interface functionalisation, or the chemistry of oxide surfaces. However, more recently it became clear that well-defined surfaces similarly represent versatile platforms to conduct metal–ligand reactions in two dimensions and engineer unique coordination compounds or layers by novel complexation or metal-directed assembly protocols. This approach presents a versatile strategy to realize coordinatively unsaturated species as well as metal–organic polymers and networks with distinct shape and functional properties.