Pasteur’s Experiment Performed at the Nanoscale: Manual Separation of Chiral Molecules, One by One

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 si...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nano letters 2015-08, Vol.15 (8), p.5388-5392
Main Authors: Ernst, Karl-Heinz, Baumann, Susanne, Lutz, Christopher P, Seibel, Johannes, Zoppi, Laura, Heinrich, Andreas J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dimers
Manuals
Nanostructure
Recognition
Scanning tunneling microscopy
Separation
Tasks
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1530-6984
1530-6992
DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01762