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APPLIED PHYSICS: Enhanced: Molecular Orbitals Tell the Story
James N. O'Shea
Techniques such as photoemission spectroscopy can offer valuable data about molecular nanostructures, but the clearest insights are sometimes provided by examining a single molecule in a material. In his Perspective, O'Shea discusses results reported in the same issue by Wachowiak et al. in which scanning tunneling microscopy was used to study an important molecular distortion that occurs in fullerene thin films. Such fullerene films show promise as molecular electronic devices. Combined with theoretical calculations, the measurements offer a detailed view of how these molecules behave in a nanostructure.
The author is with the Nanoscience Group, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. E-mail: james.oshea{at}nottingham.ac.uk
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REPORTS
A. Wachowiak, R. Yamachika, K. H. Khoo, Y. Wang, M. Grobis, D.-H. Lee, Steven G. Louie, and M. F. Crommie (21 October 2005) Science310 (5747), 468.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1117303] |Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »|Supporting Online Material »
