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Submolecular-Resolution Imaging of Interfacial Water

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High Resolution Imaging, Spectroscopy and Nuclear Quantum Effects of Interfacial Water

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Abstract

In this chapter, we report the submolecular-resolution imaging of water molecules adsorbed on a Au-supported NaCl(001) film with STM and nc-AFM. In the STM experiments, we first decouple electronically the water molecule from the metal substrate by inserting an insulating NaCl layer and then employed the STM tip as a top gate to tune controllably the molecular density of states of water around the Fermi level (EF). These key steps enable the direct visualizing of frontier molecular orbitals of adsorbed water, which allows discriminating the orientation of the monomers, the H-bond directionality of the tetramers in real space and characterization of H-bonded water clusters and overlayers on NaCl(001) film. In addition, we also achieve the submolecular-resolution imaging of water nanoclusters on the NaCl(001) film by probing the high-order electrostatic force using a qPlus-based nc-AFM with a CO-terminated tip. The non-invasive AFM imaging technique may open a new avenue of studying the intrinsic structure and dynamics of ice or water on surfaces, ion hydration and biological water with atomic precision.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics, International Center for Quantum Materials, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Jing Guo

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  1. Jing Guo
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Correspondence to Jing Guo .

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Guo, J. (2018). Submolecular-Resolution Imaging of Interfacial Water. In: High Resolution Imaging, Spectroscopy and Nuclear Quantum Effects of Interfacial Water. Springer Theses. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1663-0_3

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