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Rotation and diffusion of naphthalene on Pt(111).
Journal article

Rotation and diffusion of naphthalene on Pt(111).

  • Kolsbjerg EL Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO), Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
  • Goubert G Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
  • McBreen PH Department of Chemistry, Laval University, Quebec, Quebec G1V 0A6, Canada.
  • Hammer B Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO), Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
  • 2018-04-02
Published in:
  • The Journal of chemical physics. - 2018
English The behavior of naphthalene on Pt(111) surfaces is studied by combining insight from scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and van der Waals enabled density functional theory. Adsorption, diffusion, and rotation are investigated by a series of variable temperature STM experiments revealing naphthalene ability to rotate on-site with ease with a rotational barrier of 0.69 eV. Diffusion to neighbouring sites is found to be more difficult. The experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical investigations which confirm that the barrier for diffusion is slightly higher than the one for rotation. The theoretical barriers for rotation and translation are found to be 0.75 and 0.78 eV, respectively. An automatic mapping of the possible diffusion pathways reveals very detailed diffusion paths with many small local minima that would have been practically impossible to find manually. This automated procedure provides detailed insight into the preferred diffusion pathways that are important for our understanding of molecule-substrate interactions.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
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Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/140307
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