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Identifying reaction pathways is a major challenge in chemistry, and proves particularly difficult for surface reactions. Here the authors show that imaging the molecular orbitals with photoemission tomography provides insight into the structure of surface intermediates allowing their identification.

Tilgner et al. demonstrated the formation of the quantum spin Hall insulator bismuthene on SiC, intercalated underneath a protective graphene layer. A hydrogen-induced orbital filtering effect is the driving force behind this reversible phase transition.

The beetle Tribolium castaneum is a commonly used laboratory model, combining the ease of systematic RNAi experiments like those in Caenorhabditis elegans, with biology that is more representative of most insects than Drosophila melanogaster. A large consortium has sequenced and analysed the genome of the red flour beetle, creating a resource for biologists everywhere.

The fabrication of a molecular quantum sensor on the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope enables the detection of minute magnetic and electric fields of single atoms with sub-angstrom resolution.

When a molecule interacts chemically with a metal, its orbitals hybridise with metal states to form the new eigenstates of the coupled system. Here, the authors show that in addition to overlap in real space and energy, hybridizing states must fulfil a momentum-matching condition.

Surface averaging techniques offer only limited access to the electrostatic potentials of nanostructures, which are determined by shape, material, and environment. Here, the authors quantify these potentials for gold and silver adatom chains, explaining the mechanisms of dipole formation.

The interaction of two magnetic moments on a metallic surface is usually understood as a competition between an indirect surface-mediated exchange interaction and the Kondo effect. Now, a different mechanism, involving chemical interactions driving a quantum phase transition, is reported.

Van der Waals interactions are difficult to calculate at an atomistic level for moderate sized structures due to the many distinct atoms involved. Here, the authors measure the van der Waals force between an organic molecule and a metal surface, examining the non-additive part of these interactions.

It is now shown that the phase of heteromolecular submonolayer films formed by adsorbates with opposite intermolecular interactions can be controlled by tuning the density of the gas phase of the species with repulsive character.

Scanning quantum dot microscopy, based on the use of a single molecule attached to the tip of the cantilever of an atomic force microscope, is shown to provide quantitative maps of surface potential distribution with atomic resolution.

Precision control over matter at the atomic scale enables a planar dye molecule to be lifted up and placed on its edge—a configuration that is surprisingly stable.

Typically for surface adsorption there is a direct relationship between interaction strength and geometric distance—a stronger interaction leads to a shorter distance between interacting objects. Here the authors show a case where a stronger interaction leads to a larger distance, and explain this apparent paradox.

Determining and controlling the junction temperature is one of the primary issues in millikelvin scanning tunneling microscopy. The authors show how to deduce this temperature from scanning tunneling spectroscopy experiments, demonstrating that their junction reaches 77 mK in spite of being exposed to a much hotter 1.5 K environment.

Quantifying the stability of inorganic/organic interfaces is challenging, as experimental methods to determine adsorption energies are scarce and the results have large uncertainties even for the most widely studied systems. Here, the authors combine temperature-programmed desorption, single-molecule atomic force microscopy, and non-local density-functional theory to accurately characterize the adsorption energy of a widely studied interface consisting of perylene-tetracarboxylic dianhydride molecules on Au(111).

Scanning tunneling microscopy is a powerful tool for determining the electronic structure of surface adsorbates. Here, carbon monoxide functionalized tips enable more accurate probing of the molecular states of graphene nanorings adsorbed on a gold surface.