Analyzing the Wave Nature of Hot Electrons with a Molecular Nanoprobe

We report on a novel method, the molecular nanoprobe (MONA) technique, which allows us to measure the nanoscale quasiparticle transport between two arbitrary surface points. In these experiments, hot electrons are injected into the sample surface from the probe tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and detected by tautomerization switching events of a single deprotonated phthalocyanine (H₂Pc) molecule. By making use of atom-by-atom-engineered interferometers on a Ag(111) surface, we demonstrate that the quantum-mechanical wave nature of hot electrons leads to characteristic oscillations of the molecule tautomerization probability. Two interferometers can be combined to build an energy-dependent selector, which allows it to selectively switch one out of two molecules without changing the position of the STM tip. The MONA technique is compared with conventional d I/d U measurements, where the injection and detection point of hot electrons is intrinsically tied to the same tip location.