Characterizing aliphatic moieties in hydrocarbons with atomic force microscopyElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Additional scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements as well as NMR, optical spectroscopy and gas chromatography (GC) characterization of the five model compounds are provided. For CPNP and CHNP the synthetic route is described. See DOI: 10.1039/c6sc04698c

• Main Authors: Schuler, Bruno, Zhang, Yunlong, Collazos, Sara, Fatayer, Shadi, Meyer, Gerhard, Pérez, Dolores, Guitián, Enrique, Harper, Michael R, Kushnerick, J. Douglas, Peña, Diego, Gross, Leo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2041-6520; 2041-6539
• DOI: 10.1039/c6sc04698c

We designed and studied hydrocarbon model compounds by high-resolution noncontact atomic force microscopy. In addition to planar polycyclic aromatic moieties, these novel model compounds feature linear alkyl and cycloaliphatic motifs that exist in most hydrocarbon resources - particularly in petroleum asphaltenes and other petroleum fractions - or in lipids in biological samples. We demonstrate successful intact deposition by sublimation of the alkyl-aromatics, and differentiate aliphatic moieties from their aromatic counterparts which were generated from the former by atomic manipulation. The characterization by AFM in combination with atomic manipulation provides clear fingerprints of the aromatic and aliphatic moieties that will facilitate their assignment in a priori unknown samples. High-resolution atomic force microscopy fingerprints of alkyl and cycloaliphatic moieties were obtained on tailor-made hydrocarbon model compounds.