First-ever high-resolution images of a molecule as it breaks and reforms chemical bonds

[rug]

May 30, 2013

When Felix Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) set out to develop nanostructures made of graphene using a new, controlled approach to chemical reactions, the first result was a surprise: spectacular images of individual carbon atoms and the bonds between them.

"We weren't thinking about making beautiful images; the reactions themselves were the goal," says Fischer, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division (MSD) and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. "But to really see what was happening at the single-atom level we had to use a uniquely sensitive atomic force microscope in Michael Crommie's laboratory." Crommie is an MSD scientist and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley.

What the microscope showed the researchers, says Fischer, "was amazing." The specific outcomes of the reaction were themselves unexpected, but the visual evidence was even more so. "Nobody has ever taken direct, single-bond-resolved images of individual molecules, right before and immediately after a complex organic reaction," Fischer says.

The researchers report their results in the June 7, 2013 edition of the journal Science, available in advance on Science Express.

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-first-ever-high-resolution-images-molecule-reforms.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. Whatever lens they used on that....

...I want one!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Me too!

It might be prohibitively expensive, though!

[NYC_SKP]

3. It's probaly connected to an entire building....

...and a staff of 30 or so technicians!

[Occulus]

7. Naaaaah.

It was all GLaDOS.

[DetlefK]

5. There was no "lens". They used an atomically sharp tip to tickle it.

See the article
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-first-ever-high-resolution-images-molecule-reforms.html
(scroll down by half)

First, they terminated the tip of an atomic-force-microscope (AFM) with a single molecule: a carbon-monoxide-molecule. Because they always stand up, the oxygen-atom faced away from the rest and became effectively the new tip.
Then they used this tip in an AFM in the non-contact-mode (also called tapping-mode): The tip whips up and down on a spring, the movement measured by a laser-point reflected on that spring. Depending on what's beneath the tip at this very moment, it becomes either attracted more or less, disturbing the regular movement of the spring. These disturbances are then reconstructed to height-differences on the surface the tip is scanned over.

They also could have done this with a scanning-tunneling-microscope (STM) (I once accidentally took a similar image of a molecule, but I never fully understood how that happened), but it's extremely difficult to control, how STM-tips are terminated. The main problem is that STM-tips have to be prepared in vacuum, because they have to be perfectly clean. AFM-tips can be prepared in any proper chemical environment and then get transfered to the measurement stage. -> They don't have to be cleaned again before using them.

[NYC_SKP]

6. I love it when you talk that way. I want more atomically sharp tip tickling, please!

[Wounded Bear]

4. That's some pretty cool shit! nt

[greiner3]

8. Help me out on this thought;

There is a particular cartoon that comes to mind when I see this 'picture'.

The cartoon depicts a certain character with large feet a rotund body and a 'horn' for a nose/mouth.

It really is the first thing (memory) to go!

[rug]

9. That character is eluding me too but here's a blobfish.

What's fascinating about the picture is how closely it resembles the diagrams in high school chemistry.