Our first Nature Communications paper: Probing the Oxidation Reactions by Raman Imaging with Single-bond Sensitivity

Our paper entitled “Chemically identifying single adatoms with single-bond sensitivity during oxidation reactions of borophene” has been published by Nature Communications. In this paper, we reported the use of scanning tunneling microscopy-controlled tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) to probe the interaction of oxygen with 2D boron (i.e., borophene) under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. TERS demonstrated the chemical identification and imaging of single oxygen atoms chemisorbed as borophene epoxide groups with single-bond (B–O) sensitivity and ~4.8 Å spatial resolution. As a result, this work brought the spatial scale of optical spectroscopic investigations down to single adatoms and corresponding individual bonds with the substrate for the first time. With this capability, we revealed the propensity of borophene towards molecular oxygen activation at room temperature and phase-dependent chemical properties of borophene. These results will improve the understanding of on-surface reactions in technologically important processes, such as heterogeneous catalysis and on-surface synthesis where the local chemistry of reactive adsorbates plays a crucial role.

L. Li, J. F. Schultz, S. Mahapatra, Z. Lu, X.  Zhang, and N. Jiang, Nature Communications, 13, Article 1796 (2022). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29445-8