Measuring Charge Distribution of Molecular Cations by an Atomic Coulomb Probe Microscope

Imaging the charge distributions and structures of molecules and clusters will promote the understanding of the dynamics of the quantum system.Here,we report a method by using an Ar atom as a tip to probe the charge distributions of benzene(Bz) cations in gas phase.Remarkably,the measured charge distributions of Bz⁺(δ_H=0.204,δ_C=-0.037) and Bz²⁺(δ_H=0.248,δ_C=0.0853) agree well with the calculated Mulliken distributions,and the struc...