Author Description

This primer focuses on bridging two seemingly distant technologies—mass spectrometry and single molecule imaging—with a technique called “soft landing”. This combination offers unique solutions and opportunities that could not be realized by either of them alone: it allows molecules you have worked so hard to prepare to be directly imaged one molecule at a time. You may have heard of mass spectrometry as a technique that identifies molecules by measuring their molecular mass. You also may have heard of single molecule imaging techniques, such as scanning probe microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, which are two direct imaging techniques today capable of imaging, with atomic resolution, the structures of individual molecules adsorbed on surfaces in a vacuum. You will learn how to combine mass spectrometry and single molecule imaging into a single workflow. By doing so, you can now transfer molecules initially in solutions onto surfaces in a vacuum so that they can be imaged one at a time. Direct imaging of single molecules allows you to determine the diverse structures and interactions of complex molecules at the ultimate single molecule level. This is a feat that is beyond the reach of today’s analytical techniques—which analyze millions of molecules at a time (also known as ensemble averaging) and hence obscure the rich chemical information at the individual level. This work bridges the first-time learners and the survey literature in the field, e.g. textbooks and reviews, which we provide as a reading list at the end of every chapter. Focusing on clarity over completeness, this work is not an in-depth review of the field, but a “travel guide” for prospective tourists. For those familiar with mass spectrometry, you will learn a way to soft land and direct image the molecular ions you are studying in the gas phase. For those familiar with microscopy on surfaces, you will learn a way to prepare contaminant-free