title: Regular scanning tunneling microscope tips can be intrinsically chiral.
abstract: We report our discovery that regular scanning tunneling microscope tips can themselves be chiral. This chirality leads to differences in electron tunneling efficiencies through left- and right-handed molecules, and, when using the tip to electrically excite molecular rotation, large differences in rotation rate were observed which correlated with molecular chirality. As scanning tunneling microscopy is a widely used technique, this result may have unforeseen consequences for the measurement of asymmetric surface phenomena in a variety of important fields.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155-5813, USA.
authors.forename: Heather L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Tierney
authors.forename: Colin J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.forename: E Charles H
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Sykes