Bending a Bond within an Individual Adsorbed Molecule

Inelastic electron tunneling manipulation of a bond within chloronitrobenzene molecules on Cu(111) shows that the energy costs for bond bending within a molecule might be partially gained through better adsorption sites of the involved atoms. The chlorine either keeps its gas phase angle and is adsorbed near an on-top site or gets distorted to be adsorbed near a hollow site. Noise analysis reveals that the excitation of several vibrational modes may initiate this bond bending.