Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 83: Organic molecules on inorganic substrates: electronic, optical and other properties III

O 83.7: Talk

Thursday, March 12, 2026, 16:30–16:45, HSZ/0201

A quantum dot-functionalized scanning tunnelling microscope tip: Sensing through electron-vibron coupling — •Stefan Schulte^1,2,3, Emilio Scontrino^1,4, Taner Esat^1,3, F. Stefan Tautz^1,3,4, and Ruslan Temirov^1,2,3 — ¹Peter Grünberg Institut (PGI-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany — ²II. Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Germany — ³Fundamentals of Future Information Technology, Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), Germany — ⁴RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) tips functionalized with a single-molecule quantum dot (QD) have been used for quantitative measurements of electrostatic surface potentials through a technique known as scanning quantum dot microscopy (SQDM) [1]. The functionalization of STM tips with large organic molecules has further enabled measurements of electrostatic and magnetic fields at the atomic scale [2, 3]. Here, we attach a naphthalene tetracarboxylic dianhydride (NTCDA) molecule, acting as a QD, to the tip of an STM and investigate charge transport through the resulting junction. In the resonant regime, the transport through the NTCDA QD exhibits signatures of electron-vibron coupling. We propose that this electron-vibron coupling can be leveraged to map surface polarizability with sub-nanometre resolution.
[1] C. Wagner et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 026101 (2015).
[2] B. Verlhac et al., Science 366, 623 (2019).
[3] T. Esat et al., Nat. Nanotechnol. 19, 1466 (2024).

Keywords: scanning tunnelling microscopy; functionalized tip; quantum dot; surface polarizability