The breakthrough in the origin of life: "blanket covered" single molecules

Chemists' long-held dream of looking at the structural dynamics of individual molecules is now possible

Professor Kyoung-Duck Park and PhD candidate in the Department of Physics at Pohang University Mingu Kang, in collaboration with Yung Doug Suh, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Ulsan Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), for the first time detected the conformation of a single molecule (the arrangement of primers in a molecule) at room temperature, leading to a more in-depth study

Because molecules exposed to air undergo continuous chemical reactions and molecular movements, it is difficult

To overcome this problem, the team placed individual molecules on a substrate coated with a gold film and covered it with a very thin layer of alumina (Al_2O3) and_bundledtightly together

The stationary molecules

Mingu Kang of Pohang University of Technology mentioned: "The James Webb Space Telescope can observe the farthest point of the observable universe and thus reveal the origin of the universe, while our single-molecule nanomicroscope can observe the smallest, thus revealing the origin

Conformational heterogeneity of molecules physisorbed on a gold surface at room temperature