With a lot of skillful maneuverings, a team of researchers have finally found a way to image a molecule. The portrait of pentacene, an organic molecule consisting of five benzene rings, shows off the chemical bonds between the carbon and hydrogen atoms. It may seem a somewhat surprising first, since atoms have been imaged for decades.
The earliest pictures of individual atoms were captured in the 1970s by blasting a target – typically a chunk of metal – with a beam of electrons, a technique known as transmission electron microscopy (TEM).... But strange though it might seem, imaging larger molecules at the same level of detail has not been possible – atoms are robust enough to withstand existing tools, but the structures of molecules are not [New Scientist].
In the new study, published in Science, researchers used an atomic force microscope to image the molecule in unprecedented resolution.
The measurement ...
