Pasteurs Experiment Performed at the Nanoscale: Manual Separation of Chiral Molecules, One by One

Karl Heinz Ernst; Susanne Baumann; Christopher P. Lutz; Johannes Seibel; Laura Zoppi; Andreas J. Heinrich

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01762

Pasteurs Experiment Performed at the Nanoscale: Manual Separation of Chiral Molecules, One by One

Karl Heinz Ernst, Susanne Baumann, Christopher P. Lutz, Johannes Seibel, Laura Zoppi, Andreas J. Heinrich

Department of Physics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

Understanding the principles of molecular recognition is a difficult task and calls for investigation of appropriate model systems. Using the manipulation capabilities of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) we analyzed the chiral recognition in self-assembled dimers of helical hydrocarbons at the single molecule level. After manual separation of the two molecules of a dimer with a molecule-terminated STM tip on a Cu(111) surface, their handedness was subsequently determined with a metal atom-terminated tip. We find that these molecules strongly prefer to form heterochiral pairs. Our study shows that single molecule manipulation is a valuable tool to understand intermolecular recognition at surfaces.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	5388-5392
Number of pages	5
Journal	Nano Letters
Volume	15
Issue number	8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01762
State	Published - 12 Aug 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Chemical Society.

Keywords

STM
Single molecule manipulation
chirality
intermolecular recognition

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10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01762

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title = "Pasteurs Experiment Performed at the Nanoscale: Manual Separation of Chiral Molecules, One by One",

abstract = "Understanding the principles of molecular recognition is a difficult task and calls for investigation of appropriate model systems. Using the manipulation capabilities of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) we analyzed the chiral recognition in self-assembled dimers of helical hydrocarbons at the single molecule level. After manual separation of the two molecules of a dimer with a molecule-terminated STM tip on a Cu(111) surface, their handedness was subsequently determined with a metal atom-terminated tip. We find that these molecules strongly prefer to form heterochiral pairs. Our study shows that single molecule manipulation is a valuable tool to understand intermolecular recognition at surfaces.",

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AU - Seibel, Johannes

AU - Zoppi, Laura

AU - Heinrich, Andreas J.

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AB - Understanding the principles of molecular recognition is a difficult task and calls for investigation of appropriate model systems. Using the manipulation capabilities of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) we analyzed the chiral recognition in self-assembled dimers of helical hydrocarbons at the single molecule level. After manual separation of the two molecules of a dimer with a molecule-terminated STM tip on a Cu(111) surface, their handedness was subsequently determined with a metal atom-terminated tip. We find that these molecules strongly prefer to form heterochiral pairs. Our study shows that single molecule manipulation is a valuable tool to understand intermolecular recognition at surfaces.

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KW - chirality

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Pasteurs Experiment Performed at the Nanoscale: Manual Separation of Chiral Molecules, One by One

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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