Perylenediimides (PDIs) substituted with a terpyridine moiety at the bay-region have been synthesized. These building blocks were used to construct supramolecular complexes in chloroform. A dimer and a trimer were built via the bay-region complexation with zinc. The PDI compounds were further modified to have silane anchors and PDI self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) were prepared on a quartz substrate