Tunneling electrons from a low-temperature (5 kelvin) scanning tunneling microscope were used to control, through resonant electronic excitation, the molecular dynamics of an individual biphenyl molecule adsorbed on a silicon(100) surface. Different reversible molecular movements were selectively activated by tuning the electron energy and by selecting precise locations for the excitation inside the molecule. Both the spatial selectivity and energy dependence of the electronic control are supported by spectroscopic measurements with the scanning tunneling microscope. These experiments demonstrate the feasibility of controlling the molecular dynamics of a single molecule through the localization of the electronic excitation inside the molecule.
At low temperature (5 K), a single biphenyl molecule adsorbed on a Si(100) surface behaves as a bistable device which can be reversibly switched by electronic excitation with the scanning tunneling microscope tip. Density functional theory suggests that the biphenyl molecule is adsorbed with one dissociated hydrogen atom bonded to a neighbor surface silicon atom. By desorbing this hydrogen atom with the STM tip, the interaction of the molecule with the surface is modified such that it becomes transformed into a multistable device with four stable states having switching yields increased by almost 2 orders of magnitude.
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