Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 60: Poster Session III (Methods: Atomic and electronic structure; Methods: electronic structure theory; Methods: Molecular simulations and statistical mechanics; Methods: Sanning probe techniques; Methods: other (experimental); Methods: other (theory) )

O 60.10: Poster

Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 17:45–20:30, Poster B2

Forces in Molecular Electronics — •Mathias Neu, Andreas Pöllmann, and Jascha Repp — Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, University of Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany

In recent years low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy have been very successfully used to study electron transport through individual molecules. However, STM investigations are limited to conducting substrates and the experimental data is determined by both the geometry and the electronic structure of the sample in a complex and often ambiguous manner. To overcome these two limitations we plan to experimentally implement force detection as an additional measure in molecular electronics. To this end a combined STM and scanning force microscope is being build up. The force detection scheme is based on using tuning forks as force sensors [1]. Unlike in the case of cantilever-based AFM, in this setup the scanning tip is not an integral part of the force sensor and can be a metal tip as is usually used in STM, thus making it an ideal force-detection technique to be combined with STM. On our poster we present our progress on the experimental setup.

[1] Giessibl, Appl. Phys. Lett. 73, 3956 (1998)