Revealing the structural detail of individual polymers using a combination of electrospray deposition and UHV-STM.

A phenylene vinylene polymer derivative is deposited onto a Au(111) surface under Ultra-High Vacuum (UHV) conditions using electrospray ionisation deposition and characterised using Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM). High resolution STM images reveal the polymer structure on the monomeric scale, allowing the identification of regioisomerism, the intricate isomerisations of the polymer side-chains, as well as the larger-scale topologies of the polymer strands.