Mapping orbital changes upon electron transfer with tunnelling microscopy on insulators

Laerte L. Patera (), Fabian Queck, Philipp Scheuerer and Jascha Repp ()
Additional contact information
Laerte L. Patera: University of Regensburg
Fabian Queck: University of Regensburg
Philipp Scheuerer: University of Regensburg
Jascha Repp: University of Regensburg

Nature, 2019, vol. 566, issue 7743, 245-248

Abstract: Abstract Electron transfer plays a crucial part in many chemical reactions1,2, including photosynthesis, combustion and corrosion. But even though redox-state transitions change the electronic structure of the molecules involved, mapping these changes at the single-molecule level is challenging. Scanning tunnelling microscopy provides insights into the orbital structure3 of single molecules and their interactions4,5, but requires the use of a conductive substrate that keeps molecules in a given charge state and thereby suppresses redox-state transitions. Atomic force microscopy can be used on insulating substrates to obtain structural6 and electrostatic7,8 information but does not generally access electronic states. Here we show that when synchronizing voltage pulses that steer electron tunnelling between a conductive atomic force microscope tip and a substrate with the oscillation of the tip, we can perform tunnelling experiments on non-conductive substrates and thereby map the orbital structure of isolated molecules as a function of their redox state. This allows us to resolve previously inaccessible electronic transitions in space and energy and to visualize the effects of electron transfer and polaron formation on individual molecular orbitals. We anticipate that our approach will prove useful for the investigation of complex redox reactions and charging-related phenomena with sub-ångström resolution.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-0910-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:566:y:2019:i:7743:d:10.1038_s41586-019-0910-3

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0910-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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