Atomic-scale investigations on single molecules by STM

Abstract

The ablilty of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to probe individual single molecules has enabled revealing material's properties which otherwise would be hidden in the study of an ensembles of molecules. Combining its imaging, manuplation, spectroscopic characterization capabilities, STM has made it possible to achieve single-molecule chemistry. In this presentation, I will introduce some of our STM results on molecular adsorbates on various surfaces, such as insulating films and graphene. On insulating films, the increased life time of vibrationally excited states opens a new dissociation pathway which is not available on metals surface. On graphene surface, fullerene molecules are ordered in a single orientation, resulting from the competition beteen intermolecular and molecule-substrate interactions. Our results show that the role of supporting substrate is very important for the dynamics and reaction of single molecules on it.