Weakly perturbative imaging of interfacial water with submolecular resolution by atomic force microscopy

Jinbo Peng, Jing Guo, Prokop Hapala, Duanyun Cao, Runze Ma, Bowei Cheng, Limei Xu, Martin Ondráček, Pavel Jelínek (), Enge Wang () and Ying Jiang ()
Additional contact information
Jinbo Peng: Peking University
Jing Guo: Peking University
Prokop Hapala: The Czech Academy of Sciences
Duanyun Cao: Peking University
Runze Ma: Peking University
Bowei Cheng: Peking University
Limei Xu: Peking University
Martin Ondráček: The Czech Academy of Sciences
Pavel Jelínek: The Czech Academy of Sciences
Enge Wang: Peking University
Ying Jiang: Peking University

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Scanning probe microscopy has been extensively applied to probe interfacial water in many interdisciplinary fields but the disturbance of the probes on the hydrogen-bonding structure of water has remained an intractable problem. Here, we report submolecular-resolution imaging of the water clusters on a NaCl(001) surface within the nearly noninvasive region by a qPlus-based noncontact atomic force microscopy. Comparison with theoretical simulations reveals that the key lies in probing the weak high-order electrostatic force between the quadrupole-like CO-terminated tip and the polar water molecules at large tip–water distances. This interaction allows the imaging and structural determination of the weakly bonded water clusters and even of their metastable states with negligible disturbance. This work may open an avenue for studying the intrinsic structure and dynamics of ice or water on surfaces, ion hydration, and biological water with atomic precision.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02635-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-017-02635-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02635-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().