title: Motion of Fullerenes around Topological Defects on Metals: Implications for the Progress of Molecular Scale Devices.
abstract: Research on motion of molecules in the presence of thermal noise is central for progress in two-terminal molecular scale electronic devices. However, it is still unclear what influence imperfections in bottom metal electrode surface can have on molecular motion. Here, we report a two-layer crowding study, detailing the early stages of surface motion of fullerene molecules on Au(111) with nanoscale pores in a n-tetradecane chemical environment. The motion of the fullerenes is directed by crowding of the underlying n-tetradecane molecules around the pore fringes at the liquid-solid interface. We observe in real-space the growth of molecular populations around different pore geometries. Supported by atomic-scale modeling, our findings extend the established picture of molecular crowding by revealing that trapped solvent molecules serve as prime nucleation sites at nanopore fringes.
authors.affiliation: IBM Research-Zurich , Säumerstrasse 4, CH- 8803 Rüschlikon, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2282-6781
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nirmalraj
authors.affiliation: Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge , 17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge CB3 0FS, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ronan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Daly
authors.affiliation: Departmento de Quimica Organica, Facultad de Quimica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid , E-28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Nazario
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5355-1477
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Bernal Institute, University of Limerick , Limerick V94 T9PX, Ireland.
authors.forename: Damien
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Thompson
keywords: fullerenes; molecular dynamics; nanopores; scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy