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Publications in Scientific Journals:

M. Wagner, M. Setvin, M. Schmid, U. Diebold:
"Sexiphenyl on Cu(100): nc-AFM tip functionalization and identification";
Surface Science, 678 (2018), 124 - 127.



English abstract:
The contrast obtained in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) images is
determined by the tip termination and symmetry. Functionalizing the tip with a single metal atom, CO molecule
or organic species has been shown to provide high spatial resolution and insights into tip-surface interactions. A
topic where this concept is utilized is the adsorption of organic molecules at surfaces. With this work we aim to
contribute to the growing database of organic molecules that allow assignment by intra-molecular imaging. We
investigated the organic molecule para-sexiphenyl (C36H26, 6P) on Cu(100) using low-temperature STM and noncontact
AFM with intra-molecular resolution. In the sub-monolayer regime we find a planar and flat adsorption
with the 6P molecules rotated 10° off the 〈010〉 directions. In this configuration, four of six phenyl rings occupy
almost equivalent sites on the surface. The 6P molecules are further investigated with CO-functionalized tips, in
comparison to a single-atom metal and 6P-terminated tip. We also show that the procedure of using adsorbed CO
to characterize tips introduced by Hofmann et al., Phys. Rev. B 112 (2014) 066101 is useful when the tip is
terminated with an organic molecule.

Keywords:
Scanning tunneling microscopy Atomic force microscopy Tip functionalization Sexiphenyl Organic molecule Copper

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.