Impact of Surface Adsorption on Metal–Ligand Binding of Phenanthrolines

Phenanthrolines are a class of ligands known to bind with many different metal cations to form complexes. The aromatic backbone of phenanthroline also allows for preferential adsorption on few-layer graphene (FLG) films via π–π stacking. Here we investigate the effects of adsorption and the resulting steric restrictions on the binding ability of four different phenanthroline derivatives: phenanthroline, neocuproine, bathophen­anthroline, and …