Automated Structure Discovery in Atomic Force Microscopy
Abstract
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) with molecule-functionalized tips has emerged as the primary experimental technique for probing the atomic structure of organic molecules on surfaces. Most experiments have been limited to nearly planar aromatic molecules, due to difficulties with interpretation of highly distorted AFM images originating from non-planar molecules. Here we develop a deep learning infrastructure that matches a set of AFM images with a unique descriptor characterizing the molecular configuration, allowing us to predict the molecular structure directly. We apply this methodology to resolve several distinct adsorption configurations of 1S-camphor on Cu(111) based on low-temperature AFM measurements. This approach will open the door to apply high-resolution AFM to a large variety of systems for which routine atomic and chemical structural resolution on the level of individual objects/molecules would be a major breakthrough.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1905.10204,
title = {Automated Structure Discovery in Atomic Force Microscopy},
author = {Benjamin Alldritt and Prokop Hapala and Niko Oinonena and Fedor Urtev and Ondrej Krejci and Filippo Federici Canova and Juho Kannala and Fabian Schulz and Peter Liljeroth and Adam S. Foster},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.10204},
year = {2020}
}