Traditional methods for creating thiol-terminated SAMs often result in lying-down dithiolate conformations due to the stability of double gold-sulfur bonds. Nanografting overcomes this limitation by leveraging spatial confinement during SAM formation. By confining the reaction area to freshly exposed gold surfaces under controlled conditions, dithiol molecules bypass the lying-down phase and directly adopt an upright configuration.

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) characterization confirms the densely packed nature and vertical orientation of nanografted SAMs. This approach enables nanometer-scale patterning of thiol-terminated SAMs, making it highly suitable for applications in molecular electronics, surface templating, and nanostructure fabrication.