Vibrational mode specific bond dissociation in a single molecule

Orientation-specific switching of inelastic electron tunneling in an oxygen-pyridine complex adsorbed onto an Ag(110) surface

Here, we report the development of a molecular rotary switch (a "stator-rotor" consisting of a single oxygen molecule as a stator and a single pyridine molecule as a rotor) on a silver surface. The pyridine molecule was bonded to the oxygen molecule and was found to rotate to enable "ON" or "OFF" vibrational conductance through the oxygen molecule. Four stable sites around the oxygen molecule were observed, and vibration conductance turned on and off depending on the site at which the pyridine molecule bonded. The spatially resolved mapping of the vibrational change revealed two locations of maximal vibration intensity, separated by ∼3 Å. These positions acted as two conducting channels. The two distinct vibrational energy levels were associated with the switching process. Adsorption-induced electron transfer between the silver layers and the molecules enhanced the local interactions between the molecules. The two vibration modes were excited by resonant tunneling despite substantial interactions between the molecules, which resulted in a decrease in tunneling conductance. An independent pathway exists for the vibrational excitation process by tunneling electrons and intermolecular interactions.

Molecular resonant dissociation of surface-adsorbed molecules by plasmonic nanoscissors

The ability to break individual bonds or specific modes in chemical reactions is an ardently sought goal by chemists and physicists. While photochemistry based methodologies are very successful in controlling e.g. photocatalysis, photosynthesis and the degradation of plastic, it is hard to break individual molecular bonds for those molecules adsorbed on the surface because of the weak light-absorption in molecules and the redistribution of the resulting vibrational energy both inside the molecule and to its surrounding environment. Here we show how to overcome these obstacles with a plasmonic hot-electron mediated process and demonstrate a new method that allows the sensitive control of resonant dissociation of surface-adsorbed molecules by 'plasmonic' scissors. To that end, we used a high-vacuum tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (HV-TERS) setup to dissociate resonantly excited NC2H6 fragments from Malachite green. The surface plasmons (SPs) excited at the sharp metal tip not only enhance the local electric field to harvest the light incident from the laser, but crucially supply 'hot electrons' whose energy can be transferred to individual bonds. These processes are resonant Raman, which result in some active chemical bonds and then weaken these bonds, followed by dumping in lots of indiscriminant energy and breaking the weakest bond. The method allows for sensitive control of both the rate and probability of dissociation through their dependence on the density of hot electrons, which can be manipulated by tuning the laser intensity or tunneling current/bias voltage in the HV-TERS setup, respectively. The concepts of plasmonic scissors open up new versatile avenues for the deep understanding of in situ surface-catalyzed chemistry.

Unravelling the molecular structure and packing of a planar molecule by combining nuclear magnetic resonance and scanning tunneling microscopy

The determination of the molecular structure of a porphyrin is achieved by using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) techniques. Since macroscopic crystals cannot be obtained in this system, this combination of techniques is crucial to solve the molecular structure without the need for X-ray crystallography. For this purpose, previous knowledge of the flatness of the reagent molecules (a porphyrin and its functionalizing group, a naphthalimide) and the resulting molecular structure obtained by a force-field simulation are used. The exponents of the I-V curves obtained by scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) allow us to check whether the thickness of the film of molecules is greater than a monolayer, even when there is no direct access to the exposed surface of the metal substrate. Photoluminescence (PL), optical absorption, infrared (IR) reflectance and solubility tests are used to confirm the results obtained here with this NMR/STM/STS combination.

Vibrational heating in single-molecule switches: an energy-dependent density-of-states approach

In recent experiments, it has been shown that the switching rate of single-molecule switches can show a rather complicated dependence on the applied bias voltage. Here, we discuss a minimal model which describes the switching process in terms of inelastic scattering processes of the tunneling electron by specific molecular vibrations. One important point is the introduction of an energy-dependent electronic density of states around the Fermi energy. The influence of different model parameters on the switching rate is studied and we show that the inclusion of a variable density of states allows us to understand the non-monotonic behavior of the switching rate observed in some experiments.

O(2) dissociation before the onset of added row nucleation on Ag(110): an atomistic scanning tunnelling microscopy view

We present here a scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) study on O(2) adsorption at Ag(110) at T = 175 K, i.e. in the temperature range between the onset of O(2) dissociation and the formation of the added row reconstruction. In agreement with previous studies at lower surface coverage, we observe several structures forming upon O(2) dissociation, including Ag-O complexes randomly distributed on the surface. We suggest that the presence of the latter structures, characterized by a large cross section for low energy electrons, can account for the marked decrease of the surface electron reflectivity and for the corresponding increase of the diffuse elastic intensity previously reported in a HREELS investigation of the same system.