Chem. ligation methods in combination with regioselective addressable templates have allowed the prepn. of well defined complex monomol. films tethered to gold surfaces. The supramol. monolayers exposed artificial recognition sites, here for monoclonal antibodies. SPR, FTIR spectroscopies, and TOF-SIMS were ideally suited surface sensitive techniques to enable the essential control of the individual reaction steps. The concept presented here for the functionalization of gold surfaces may be easily applied to other supporting materials, and is not limited to peptides, but may equally extend to proteins or nucleic acids. This approach may be extended to the construction of multifunctional surfaces with potential in bio-analytics. [on SciFinder (R)]