SKM 2023 – scientific programme
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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik
O 54: Focus Session: Scanning Probe Microscopy with Quartz Sensors II
O 54.3: Talk
Wednesday, March 29, 2023, 15:45–16:00, CHE 89
Water Dimer-Driven DNA Base Superstructure with Mismatched Hydrogen Bonding — Shuning Cai1, Lauri Kurki1, •Chen Xu1, Adam S. Adam1,2, and Peter Liljeroth1 — 1Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, 00076 Aalto, Espoo, Finland — 2WPI Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI), Kanazawa University, Kakuma-machi, Kanazawa 920-1192, Japan
The existence of water dimers in equilibrium water vapor at room temperature and their anomalous properties revealed by recent studies suggest the benchmark role of water dimers in both experiments and theory. However, there have been limited observations of individual water dimers due to the challenge of water separation and generation at the single-molecule level. Here, we achieve real-space imaging of individual confined water dimers embedded inside a self-assembled layer of a DNA base, adenine, on Ag(111). The hydration of the adenine layers by these water dimers causes a local surface chiral inversion in such a way that the neighboring homochiral adenine molecules become heterochiral after hydration, resulting in a mismatched hydrogen-bond pattern between neighboring adenine molecules. Furthermore, theoretical simulation and calculations corroborate the mutual influence between the adenine superstructure and these dynamic confined water dimers. The observation of single confined water dimers offers an unprecedented approach to studying the fundamental forms of water clusters and their interaction with the local chemical environment.