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Phys. Rev. B 80, 081403(R) (2009) [4 pages]

Looking inside an endohedral fullerene: Inter- and intramolecular ordering of Dy3N@C80 (Ih) on Cu(111)

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Matthias Treier1,*, Pascal Ruffieux1, Roman Fasel1, Frithjof Nolting2, Shangfeng Yang3,4, Lothar Dunsch3, and Thomas Greber5
1Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, nanotech@surfaces Laboratory, 3602 Thun and 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
2Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
3Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, 01069 Dresden, Germany
4Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
5Physics Institute, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland

Received 24 June 2009; revised 22 July 2009; published 11 August 2009

See accompanying Physics Synopsis

The inter- and intramolecular ordering of the trimetallic nitride endohedral fullerene Dy3N@C80 with icosahedral cage symmetry Ih on Cu(111) has been studied by scanning tunneling microscopy and synchrotron-based x-ray photoelectron diffraction (XPD). Dy3N@C80 (Ih) is found to form ordered islands consisting of domains of equally oriented molecules. As for C60 on the same substrate, the cage is facing with a hexagon toward the surface, which is however slightly tilted for C80. The endohedral nitrogen atom remains at a position close to the geometrical center of the cage. Resonant XPD on the MV edge shows that the encaged Dy3N unit takes well-defined orientations with respect to the C80 cage and the Cu(111) substrate.

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.80.081403
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.80.081403
PACS:
68.35.bp, 61.05.js, 68.37.Ef, 68.43.Fg

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; matthias.treier@gmail.com

 
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