Using ary
ldiazonium sa
lts that are air-stab
le and easi
ly synthesized, we describe here a one-step, room-temperature route to direct cova
lent bonds between
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-conjugated organic mo
lecu
les on threemateria
l surfaces: Si, GaAs, and Pd. The Si can be in the form of sing
le crysta
l Si inc
luding heavi
ly dopedp-type Si, intrinsic Si, heavi
ly doped n-type Si, on Si(111) and Si(100), and on n-type po
lycrysta
lline Si.The formation of the ary
l-meta
l or ary
l-semiconductor bond attachments was confirmed by corroboratingevidence from e
llipsometry, ref
lectance FTIR, XPS, cyc
lic vo
ltammetry, and AFM ana
lyses of the surface-grafted mono
layers. A data-encompassing exp
lanation for the mechanism suggests a diazonium activationby reduction at the open circuit potentia
l, with ary
l radica
l secondary products bonding to the surface. Thesynthetic detai
ls are inc
luded for preparing the surface-grafted mono
layers and the precursor diazoniumsa
lts. This spontaneous diazonium activation reaction offers an attractive route to high
ly passivating, robustmono
layers and mu
lti
layers on many surfaces that a
llow for strong bonds between carbon and surfaceatoms with mo
lecu
lar species that are near perpendicu
lar to the surface.