Images of a molecule

"Nobody has ever taken direct, single-bond-resolved images of individual molecules, right before and immediately after a complex organic reaction," says Felix Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

(The researchers report their results in the June 7, 2013 edition of the journal Science, available in advance on Science Express.)

Almost as clearly as textbook diagram, this image made by a noncontact atomic force microscope reveals the positions of individual atoms and bonds, in a molecule having 26 carbon atoms and 14 ydrogen atoms structured as three connected benzene rings. Credit: Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley

The original reactant molecule, resting on a flat silver surface, is imaged both before and after the reaction, which occurs when the temperature exceeds 90 degrees Celcius. The two most common final products of the reaction are shown. The three-angstrom scale bars (an angstrom is a ten-billionth of a meter) indicate that the reactant and product molecules are about a billionth of a meter across. Credit: Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley

The single-atom tip of the noncontact atomic force microscope "feels" changes in the strength of electronic forces as it moves across the surface at a constant height. Resulting movements of the stylus are detected by a laser beam to compute images. Credit: Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley

#thankfully shared from: http://phys.org
May 30, 2013