Professor Zheng Nanfeng of Xiamen University and Ma Zhibo, associate researcher and collaborator of Dalian Institute of chemical sciences have made new progress in metal nanoclusters through STM

Recently, I Chem researchers, professors Zheng Lansun, Xie Zhaoxiong and Zheng Nanfeng from the school of chemistry and chemical engineering of Xiamen University, cooperated with researcher Yang Xueming, associate researcher Ma Zhibo and Professor Hannu h ä kkinen from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor Hannu h ä kkinen of the University of Weasley, Finland, to study the surface ligands of Ag 374 nanoclusters by STM With the help of DFT calculation and template recognition, the morphology and structure of ligands and the orientation of clusters can be identified Relevant achievements "real space imaging with pattern recognition of a alive protected Ag 374 nanocluster at sub molecular resolution" were published on nature communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05372-5) The real space imaging of nanoparticles is very important to understand the relationship among particle size, shape, assembly, structure and stability Because these basic characteristics determine the function of cluster particles in many applications such as catalysis, drug delivery, biosensor and medical diagnosis Researchers have done a lot of research on the resolution of the organic molecules on the plane through the atomic force microscope (AFM) and STM, but it is a great challenge for the imaging of the organic layer on the surface of nanoparticles Firstly, the surface of nanoparticles with high curvature will lead to the strong tip convolution effect in space, resulting in the uneven size and shape of nanoparticles; secondly, the structure of nanoparticles is unknown, and the surface organic layer is difficult to analyze for STM, and it is also difficult to simulate the accurate AFM or STM image through theory The structure of Ag 374 nanoparticles and STM imaging (source: nature Communications) In this work, the research team took the Ag 374 nanoclusters with accurate atomic structure as the research object, and used the low-temperature ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscope at lhe and LN 2 respectively High resolution topological images of single cluster sub molecules were obtained at temperature Combined with the high-resolution STM image of single TBBT on Au (111) surface at LN 2 and DFT theoretical STM image of Ag 374, it is proved that the high-resolution STM image of Ag 374 shows the morphology of single TBBT and can distinguish single methyl group Then, with the help of the principle of "image recognition", a highly matched cluster orientation is found by using the template recognition method in STM simulation image database This work provides guidance and help for the design of functional nanoclusters based on Application in the future This work is the result of the joint cooperation of many core and peripheral cooperative units of I Chem, such as Xiamen University, Dalian Institute of chemical technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Westphalia of Finland The corresponding author is Professor Zheng Nanfeng of Xiamen University and associate researcher Ma Zhibo of Dalian Institute of chemical technology The first author is Zhou Qin, a 2013 level direct doctoral student of School of chemical engineering of Xiamen University The research work was supported by the Ministry of science and technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the leading project of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the national key research and development plan, and the open research fund of the National Key Laboratory of molecular reaction kinetics.