| AVS 65th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Surface Science Division | Thursday Sessions |
| Session SS+EM+PS+TF-ThA |
| Session: | Deposition, Etching and Growth at Surfaces |
| Presenter: | Giovanni Costantini, University of Warwick, UK |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
The ultimate spatial resolution of scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) has allowed to gain an exceptional insight into the structure and the intra- and inter-molecular bonding of a huge number of adsorbed molecular system. Unfortunately, these remarkable analytical capabilities are achieved only under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions and therefore cannot be directly applied to more interesting systems composed of functional (bio)molecules or complex synthetic compounds. In fact, thermal sublimation is the strategy of choice for preparing ultrathin films of small and heat-resistant molecules in UHV but larger, complex (bio)molecules are not compatible with this process.
This challenge has been overcome in recent years by adapting soft-ionisation techniques developed in mass spectrometry (mainly electrospray ionisation, ESI) to transfer intact fragile molecules into the gas phase and to soft-land them onto atomically flat and clean substrates. When combined with advanced scanning probe microscopes operating under UHV conditions, these novel set-ups allow the surface deposition and high-resolution characterisation of a wide range of functional organic molecules and inorganic nanoparticles.
This talk will present recent advances in the development of ESI-deposition techniques and their combination with UHV-STM to analyse complex (bio)molecule-surface systems. It will start by reviewing the limits that standard molecular deposition imposes on the size of (bio)molecules that can by studied in surface science. It will continue by presenting a recently developed ESI-deposition setup based on a simple, efficient and modular design with a high intensity and mass selectivity. The discussion will then proceed to the application of ESI-STM to the characterisation of adsorbed polypeptides and polymers. In particular, it will be shown that this technique allows the imaging of individual macromolecules with unprecedented detail, thereby unravelling structural and self-assembly characteristics that have so far been impossible to determine.