DIET at the nanoscale

We review the long evolution of DIET (Dynamics at surfaces Induced by Electronic Transitions) that began in the 1960s when Menzel, Gomer and Redhead proposed their famous stimulated desorption model. DIET entered the nanoscale in the 1990s when researchers at Bell Labs and IBM realized that the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) could be used as an atomic size source of electrons to electronically excite individual atoms and molecules on surfaces. Resonant and radiant Inelastic Electron Tunneling (LET) using the STM have considerably enlarged the range of applications of DIET. Nowadays, DIET at the nanoscale covers a broad range of phenomena at the atomic-scale. This includes molecular dynamics (dissociation, desorption, isomerization, displacement, chemical reactions), vibrational spectroscopy and dynamics, spin spectroscopy and manipulation, luminescence spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and plasmonics. Future trends of DIET at the nanoscale offer exciting prospects for new methods to control light and matter at the nanoscale. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.