Measuring fine molecular structures with luminescence signal from an alternating current scanning tunneling microscope

Abstract

In scanning tunneling microscopy induced luminescence (STML), the photon counting is measured to reflect the single-molecule properties, e.g., the first molecular excited state. The energy of the first excited state is typically determined by a rising position of the photon counting as a function of the bias voltage between the tip and the substrate. It remains a challenge to determine the precise rise position of the current due to the possible experimental noise. In this work, we propose an alternating current version of STML to resolve the fine structures in the photon counting measurement. The measured photon counting and the current at the long-time limit show a sinusoidal oscillation. The zero-frequency component of the current shows knee points at the precise voltage as the fraction of the detuning between the molecular gap and the DC component of bias voltage. We propose to measure the energy level with discontinuity of the first derivative of such zero-frequency component. The current method will extend the application of STML in terms of measuring molecular properties