Real-space imaging of interfacial water with submolecular resolution
Real-space imaging of interfacial water with submolecular resolution
复制标题
亚分子分辨率的界面水实空间成像
DOI：
10.1038/nmat3848
复制
发表时间：
2014-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
41.2
通讯作者：
Jiang, Ying
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Guo, Jing;Meng, Xiangzhi;Jiang, Ying
水/固体界面对我们的日常生活至关重要，也是广泛科学学科的中心主题。水分子吸附在固体表面的内部结构，即O-H方向性的解析一直是水科学的关键问题之一，但它仍然具有挑战性。利用低温扫描隧道显微镜，我们报告了在5 K下，单个水单体和四聚体在Au（111）衬底支撑的NaCl（001）膜上的亚分子分辨率成像。吸附水的前线分子轨道直接可视化，这使得歧视的取向的单体和氢键的方向性的四聚体在真实的空间。与从头算密度泛函理论计算的比较表明，访问水的轨道结构的能力源于由NaCl膜和精确可调的尖端-水耦合提供的电子去耦效应。
Water/solid interfaces are vital to our daily lives and are also a central theme across an incredibly wide range of scientific disciplines. Resolving the internal structure, that is, the O-H directionality, of water molecules adsorbed on solid surfaces has been one of the key issues of water science yet it remains challenging. Using a low-temperature scanning tunnelling microscope, we report submolecular-resolution imaging of individual water monomers and tetramers on NaCl(001) films supported by a Au(111) substrate at 5 K. The frontier molecular orbitals of adsorbed water were directly visualized, which allowed discrimination of the orientation of the monomers and the hydrogen-bond directionality of the tetramers in real space. Comparison with ab initio density functional theory calculations reveals that the ability to access the orbital structures of water stems from the electronic decoupling effect provided by the NaCl films and the precisely tunable tip-water coupling.