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The recent rapid advances in nanotechnology are due in large part to our newly
acquired tools in measuring and manipulating nanostructures, even individual
atoms or molecules. As a class of useful tools, scanning probe microscopy,
especially scanning tunneling microscopy, provides us the special method to
describe the locally physical and chemical properties of nanostructures, and
even help us to manipulate nanostructures for constructing new nano-scale
apparatus. Here we report our studies on fullerene molecules and quantum dots by
using a ultra-high vacuum low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope with
emphases on the following aspects: identifying orientational configurations of
individual fullerene molecules on different material surface; novel topological
order in 2-D C60 domains; single molecule manipulation and negative differential
resistance molecular device involving two C60 molecules; size-dependent single
electron tunneling effects in 2-D Au clusters; tunable single electron tunneling
behavior of ligand-stablized 3-D gold particles; and electrochemical capacitance
of a width-variable nano-junction.
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