Simpson, Grant J.García-López, VíctorDaniel Boese, A.Tour, James M.Grill, Leonhard2020-02-142020-02-142019Simpson, Grant J., García-López, Víctor, Daniel Boese, A., et al.. "How to control single-molecule rotation." <i>Nature Communications,</i> 10, (2019) Springer Nature: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12605-8.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108054The orientation of molecules is crucial in many chemical processes. Here, we report how single dipolar molecules can be oriented with maximum precision using the electric field of a scanning tunneling microscope. Rotation is found to occur around a fixed pivot point that is caused by the specific interaction of an oxygen atom in the molecule with the Ag(111) surface. Both directions of rotation are realized at will with 100% directionality. Consequently, the internal dipole moment of an individual molecule can be spatially mapped via its behavior in an applied electric field. The importance of the oxygen-surface interaction is demonstrated by the addition of a silver atom between a single molecule and the surface and the consequent loss of the pivot point.engThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.Journal articles41467-019-12605-8https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12605-8