We present a modification of the ∆SCF method of calculating energies of excited states, in order to make it applicable to resonance calculations of molecules adsorbed on metal surfaces, where the molecular orbitals are highly hybridized. The ∆SCF approximation is a density functional method closely resembling standard density functional theory (DFT), the only difference being that in ∆SCF one or more electrons are placed in higher lying Kohn-Sham orbitals, instead of placing all electrons in the lowest possible orbitals as one does when calculating the ground state energy within standard DFT. We extend the ∆SCF method by allowing excited electrons to occupy orbitals which are linear combinations of Kohn-Sham orbitals. With this extra freedom it is possible to place charge locally on adsorbed molecules in the calculations, such that resonance energies can be estimated, which is not possible in traditional ∆SCF because of very delocalized Kohn-Sham orbitals. The method is applied to N2, CO and NO adsorbed on different metallic surfaces and compared to ordinary ∆SCF without our modification, spatially constrained DFT and inverse-photoemission spectroscopy (IPES) measurements. This comparison shows that the modified ∆SCF method gives results in close agreement with experiment, significantly closer than the comparable methods. For N2 adsorbed on ruthenium (0001) we map out a 2-dimensional part of the potential energy surfaces in the ground state and the 2π-resonance. From this we conclude that an electron hitting the resonance can induce molecular motion, optimally with 1.5 eV transferred to atomic movement. Finally we present some performance test of the ∆SCF approach on gas-phase N2 and CO, in order to compare the results to higher accuracy methods. Here we find that excitation energies are approximated with accuracy close to that of time-dependent density functional theory. Especially we see very good agreement in the minimum shift of the potential energy surfaces in the excited state compared to the ground state.

Atomically precise graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) attract great interest because of their highly tunable electronic, optical, and transport properties. However, on-surface synthesis of GNRs is typically based on metal-surface assisted chemical reactions, where metallic substrates strongly screen their designer electronic properties and limit further applications. Here, we present an on-surface synthesis approach to forming atomically precise GNRs directly on semiconducting metal oxide surfaces. The thermally triggered multistep transformations preprogrammed in our precursors’ design rely on highly selective and sequential activations of C-Br, C-F bonds and cyclodehydrogenation. The formation of planar armchair GNRs terminated by well-defined zigzag ends is confirmed by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, which also reveal weak interaction between GNRs and the rutile TiO2 substrate.

Flow cytometry is widely used for analyzing microparticles, such as cells and bacteria. In this paper, we report an innovative microsystem, in which several different optical elements (waveguides, lens and fiber-to-waveguide couplers) are integrated with microfluidic channels to form a complete microchip flow cytometer. All the optical elements, the microfluidic system, and the fiber-to-waveguide couplers were defined in one layer of polymer (SU-8, negative photoresist) by standard photolithography. With only a single mask procedure required, all the fabrication and packaging processes can be finished in one day. Polystyrene beads were measured in the microchip flow cytometer, and three signals (forward scattering, large angle scattering and extinction) were measured simultaneously for each bead. To our knowledge this is the first time forward scattered light and incident light extinction were measured in a microsystem using integrated optics. The microsystem can be applied for analyzing different kinds of particles and cells, and can easily be integrated with other microfluidic components.

The rational synthesis of nanographenes and carbon nanoribbons directly on nonmetallic surfaces has been an elusive goal for a long time. We report that activation of the carbon (C)–fluorine (F) bond is a reliable and versatile tool enabling intramolecular aryl-aryl coupling directly on metal oxide surfaces. A challenging multistep transformation enabled by C–F bond activation led to a dominolike coupling that yielded tailored nanographenes directly on the rutile titania surface. Because of efficient regioselective zipping, we obtained the target nanographenes from flexible precursors. Fluorine positions in the precursor structure unambiguously dictated the running of the “zipping program,” resulting in the rolling up of oligophenylene chains. The high efficiency of the hydrogen fluoride zipping makes our approach attractive for the rational synthesis of nanographenes and nanoribbons directly on insulating and semiconducting surfaces.