The Crudden and Horton groups have just published a paper in Nature Communications describing a new bench stable organic compound that can be used to prepare NHC films on gold.
C.M. Crudden*, J.H. Horton*, M.R. Narouz, Z. Li, C.A. Smith, K. Munro, C.J. Baddeley, C.R. Larrea, B. Drevniok, B. Thanabalasingam, A.B. McLean, O.V. Zenkina, I.I. Ebralidze, Z. She, H.-B. Kraatz, N.J. Mosey, L.N. Saunders, A. Yagi, "Bio-sensing with robust, readily formed, self-assembled carbene monolayers on gold"