RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Quantitative analysis of scanning tunneling microscopy images of mixed-ligand-functionalized nanoparticles
A1 Biscarini, Fabio
A1 Ong, Quy Khac
A1 Albonetti, Cristiano
A1 Liscio, Fabiola
A1 Longobardi, Maria
A1 Mali, Kunal S.
A1 Ciesielski, Artur
A1 Reguera Gómez, Javier
A1 Renner, Christoph
A1 De Feyter, Steven
A1 Samorì, Paolo
A1 Stellacci, Francesco
AB Ligand-protected gold nanoparticles exhibit large local curvatures, features rapidly varying over small scales, and chemical heterogeneity. Their imaging by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) can, in principle, provide direct information on the architecture of their ligand shell, yet STM images require laborious analysis and are challenging to interpret. Here, we report a straightforward, robust, and rigorous method for the quantitative analysis of the multiscale features contained in STM images of samples consisting of functionalized Au nanoparticles deposited onto Au/mica. The method relies on the analysis of the topographical power spectral density (PSD) and allows us to extract the characteristic length scales of the features exhibited by nanoparticles in STM images. For the mixed-ligand-protected Au nanoparticles analyzed here, the characteristic length scale is 1.2 ± 0.1 nm, whereas for the homoligand Au NPs this scale is 0.75 ± 0.05 nm. These length scales represent spatial correlations independent of scanning parameters, and hence the features in the PSD can be ascribed to a fingerprint of the STM contrast of ligand-protected nanoparticles. PSD spectra from images recorded at different laboratories using different microscopes and operators can be overlapped across most of the frequency range, proving that the features in the STM images of nanoparticles can be compared and reproduced.
PB ACS
SN 0743-7463
YR 2013
FD 2013
LK https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/73088
UL https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/73088
LA eng
NO Langmuir, 2013, 29(45) 13723–13734
NO Producción Científica
DS UVaDOC
RD 12-mar-2025