The attachment of single atoms or molecules to the end of the probing tip gives new opportunities to probe chemical interactions with high precision. The first example is the pulling of polymeric chains and graphene nanoribbons across a surface of Au(111), which gives information about the adhesive and frictional forces. The second example is to attach noble gas atoms to the tip and to probe the van der Waals interaction between single atoms. It is found that the polarizabilities are changed due to the presence of the surfaces compared to free gas atoms.

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Bio

Ernst Meyer if full professor at the University of Basel in the Department of Physics. He received his PhD in 1992 from the University of Basel and performed postdoctoral studies at the IBM research center Zurich. His main research interests are scanning probe microscopy with applications to nanomechanics and nanoelectronics.