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Updated: Jul 12, 2026

Investigating Single Molecule Adhesion by Atomic Force Spectroscopy
Published on: February 27, 2015
Real-time observation of the vibration of a single adsorbed molecule
Abstract:
The newly developed femtosecond field emission camera was used to observe the time dependence of field emission through a single copper phthalocyanine molecule adsorbed on a tungsten tip. In many of the individual 212-picosecond-long recordings, the field emission was found to oscillate with a frequency between 5 x 10(10) and 20 x 10(10) hertz. The oscillations, which were not observed from a bare tip, are believed to arise from the vibration of a single molecule with respect to the surface. Numerical simulations confirmed the statistical significance of the data.
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