Guillaume Schull

Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, IPCMS, UMR 7504, Strasbourg, France

Abstract:

The electric current traversing the junction of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) may lead to a local emission of light that can be used to generate sub-molecularly resolved fluorescence maps of individual molecules. Combined with spectral selection and time-correlated measurements, this hyper-resolved fluorescence microscopy approach allowed us to scrutinize the vibronic structure of individual molecules [1] in a very similar way than in the recent TERS reports, without requiring an optical excitation. We used this approach to characterize the photonics properties of charged species [2], to track the motion of hydrogen atoms within free-based phthalocyanine molecules [3], and more recently to follow resonance energy transfers between individual pigments, exploring processes occurring in photosynthetic complexes with sub-molecular spatial resolution [4].

These results constitute an important step towards photonic measurements with atoms-scale resolution [5].

Exploring energy transfers occurring in leafs with a scanning tunneling microscope.

References

• [1] B Doppagne et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 127401 (2017)
• [2] B Doppagne et al. Science 361, 251 (2018)
• [3] B Doppagne et al. Nature Nanotechnol.15, 207 (2020).
• [4] S Cao et al. Nature Chem. 12, 766 (2021)
• [5] A Roslawska et al. arXiv:2107.01072