Abstract Controlled manipulations with the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) down to the scale of small molecules and single atoms allow to built molecular and atomic nanosystems, leading to the fascinating possibility of creating manmade structures on atomic scale. Here we present a short review on atomic scale manipulation investigations. Upon soft lateral manipulation of adsorbed species, in which only tip/particle forces are used, three different manipulation modes (pushing, pulling, sliding) can be discerned. We show that even the manipulation of highly coordinated native substrate atoms is possible and we demonstrate how this can be applied as local analytic and synthetic chemistry tools, with important consequences on surface structure research. Vertical manipulation of Xe and CO is demonstrated, leading to improved imaging with functionalized tips. With CO deliberately transferred to the tip, we have also succeeded to perform vibrational spectroscopy on single molecules. Furthermore, we describe how we have reproduced a full chemical reaction with single molecules, whereby all basic steps, namely preparation of the reactants, diffusion and association, are induced with the STM tip. Finally, we have extended the manipulation techniques to large specially designed molecules by performing lateral manipulation in constant height and realizing the principle of a conformational molecular switch.
Received: 05 March 2001
Revised: 30 March 2001
Accepted manuscript online:
PACS:
0779
Cite this article:
F. Moresco, S.W. Hla, J. Repp, K.-F. Braun, S. F?lsch, G. Meyer, K. H. Rieder MANIPULATION OF ATOMS, MOLECULES AND CLUSTERS FOR CONSTRUCTION OF NANOSYSTEMS 2001 Chinese Physics 10 10
Altmetric calculates a score based on the online attention an article receives. Each coloured thread in the circle represents a different type of online attention. The number in the centre is the Altmetric score. Social media and mainstream news media are the main sources that calculate the score. Reference managers such as Mendeley are also tracked but do not contribute to the score. Older articles often score higher because they have had more time to get noticed. To account for this, Altmetric has included the context data for other articles of a similar age.