Manipulation of atoms, molecules and clusters for construction of nanosystems

Controlled manipulations with the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) down to the scale of small molecules and single atoms allow to built molecular a nd atomic nanosystems, leading to the fascinating possibility of creating m anmade structures on atomic scale. Here we present a short review on atomic scale manipulation investigations. Upon soft lateral manipulation of adsor bed species, in which only tip/particle forces are used, three different ma nipulation modes (pushing, pulling, sliding) can be discerned. We show that even the manipulation of highly coordinated native substrate atoms is poss ible and we demonstrate how this can be applied as local analytic and synth etic chemistry tools, with important consequences on surface structure rese arch. Vertical manipulation of Xe and CO is demonstrated, leading to improv ed imaging with functionalized tips. With CO deliberately transferred to th e tip, we have also succeeded to perform vibrational spectroscopy on single molecules. Furthermore, we describe how we have reproduced a full chemical reaction with single molecules, whereby all basic steps, namely preparatio n of the reactants, diffusion and association, are induced with the STM tip . Finally, we have extended the manipulation techniques to large specially designed molecules by performing lateral manipulation in constant height an d realizing the principle of a conformational molecular switch.