  Because of its promising contribution to the bottom-up approach for
nanofabrication of complex molecular architectures, self-organization is widely
studied nowadays. Numerous studies have tackled supramolecular chirality or
low-dimensional molecular nanostructures using in most cases small and rigid
molecules adsorbed on metallic substrates. In this situation, self-assembled
structures can be understood in relative simple terms considering
molecule-molecule versus molecule-substrate interactions. In contrast, the case
of large and three-dimensional molecules which can adopt different adsorption
conformations is more complex. Here, we investigate the self-assembly of
V-Landers molecules (C108H104) on Cu(100) by STM at room temperature under
ultrahigh vacuum. This molecule is constituted of a central poly-aromatic board
linked by sigma bonds to four 3,5-di-tert-butylphenyl legs.
