[zaimir83]

Hi. I am not in chemistry field. But I want to do an experiment on thiols self-assembly monolayer (SAM) on top of gold surface. But I have couple questions before that:

1) How do I get the gold surface fully covered (100 percent coverage) by thiols?
2) How do I know that it is only thiols that stick to the gold surface (not other agents/chemicals)?
3) and if I want to attach antibody/protien to the thiols surface, can I attach it directly without activating the carboxyl group of the thiols (by immersing the gold plate in the EDC and NHS)?

Hope you guys can solve my confusions. Thanks in advance.   

[phenol]

I did this experiment before. And the procedure was as the same as you wrote. I just put the gold plate into solutions of thiols and left it standing for many hours.

And I used the atom force microscopy test to confirm the self-assembly layer. The results indicated that this method was efficient. Somethimes I confirmed the layer by electrochemical test, for the thiol function group has a good electrochemical redox activation.