Probes to control chemistry – molecule by molecule

In their proof-of-principle experiment, Wong’s group attached titanium dioxide nanoparticles to the end of a conventional AFM probe and used it to photocatalytically oxidize selected sites on a thin film of photoreactive dye — a model for understanding photocatalysis in solar cells In the experiment, oxidized and unaffected areas of the dye were often separated by a mere 0.1 microns (millionths of a meter). The hope is to increase the spatial resolution of the technique to affect changes molecule by molecule, or at the one-nanometer (billionths of a meter) scale, Wong says.

The functionalization of AFM probes with molecular tooltips has been area of theoretical study