Self-Defined Transition State in Hybrid C70-Au Clusters Created by the Scanning Tunneling Microscope Tip

Manipulation of C70-Au hybrid nanoclusters was investigated using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip. We demonstrate that removing a selected C70 molecule from the cluster by STM-tip resulted in an intermediate transition state without thermal decomposition. The molecule rotates and diffuses around the cluster and leaves the cluster without taking an additional molecule and Au atoms due to the rather weak interaction between molecules and the surface atoms. After removing a C70 molecule, the van der Waals interaction among the remaining C70 molecules leads to reorganization of the cluster. This self-transition-state is due to a weak charge transfer between the molecules and the surface. The extraction of molecules in a ring cluster resulted in polygonal Au island formation. © 2019 American Chemical Society.FBA-2018-10813This work was supported by Cukurova University Scientific Research Funding Grand No: FBA-2018-10813