Direct Observation of Individual Charges and Their Dynamics on Graphene by Low-Energy Electron Holography

Visualizing individual charges confined to molecules and observing their dynamics with high spatial resolution is a challenge for advancing various fields in science, ranging from mesoscopic physics to electron transfer events in biological molecules. We show here that the high sensitivity of low-en...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nano letters 2016-09, Vol.16 (9), p.5469-5474
Main Authors: Latychevskaia, Tatiana, Wicki, Flavio, Longchamp, Jean-Nicolas, Escher, Conrad, Fink, Hans-Werner
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Visualizing individual charges confined to molecules and observing their dynamics with high spatial resolution is a challenge for advancing various fields in science, ranging from mesoscopic physics to electron transfer events in biological molecules. We show here that the high sensitivity of low-energy electrons to local electric fields can be employed to directly visualize individual charged adsorbates and to study their behavior in a quantitative way. This makes electron holography a unique probing tool for directly visualizing charge distributions with a sensitivity of a fraction of an elementary charge. Moreover, spatial resolution in the nanometer range and fast data acquisition inherent to lens-less low-energy electron holography allows for direct visual inspection of charge transfer processes.
ISSN:1530-6984
1530-6992
DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b01881