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Title: Repulsive tip tilting as the dominant mechanism for hydrogen bond-like features in atomic force microscopy imaging

Journal Article · · Applied Physics Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4948600· OSTI ID:1471069
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [2]
  1. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
  2. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Center for Computational Materials, Inst. for Computational Engineering and Sciences
  3. Yale Univ., New Haven, CT (United States). Dept. of Applied Physics
+ Show Author Affiliations

Experimental atomic force microscopy (AFM) studies have reported distinct features in regions with little electron density for various organic systems. These unexpected features have been proposed to be a direct visualization of intermolecular hydrogen bonding. Here, we apply a computational method using ab initio real-space pseudopotentials along with a scheme to account for tip tilting to simulate AFM images of the 8-hydroxyquinoline dimer and related systems to develop an understanding of the imaging mechanism for hydrogen bonds. We find that contrast for the observed “hydrogen bond” feature comes not from the electrostatic character of the bonds themselves but rather from repulsive tip tilting induced by neighboring electron-rich atoms.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC)
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-06ER46286; SC0008877
OSTI ID:
1471069
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1252114
Journal Information:
Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 108, Issue 19; ISSN 0003-6951
Publisher:
American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 15 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (2)

Copper-oxide tip functionalization for submolecular atomic force microscopy journal January 2018
Simulating noncontact atomic force microscopy images journal November 2019

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