UC Riverside

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) is well known as a powerful instrument in surface science research. In this dissertation, STM, together with density functional theory (DFT), is used to investigate the chemical bonding properties and charge transfer of metal-organic coordination. The contribution to the coordination compounds with similar but different functional ligands having the same molecular backbones is studied. However, the STM image quality is highly related to the properties of the STM tip. How the adsorbed small molecules on the tip that lead to tip rearrangement and finally affects the STM image acquired for a long-range periodic 2-D pattern is investigated in this dissertation. Furthermore, STM is not the only instrument that can help us to understand surface science and catalysis. In this dissertation, photoelectron spectroscopies, such as XPS, PL and Raman are used to analyze the modified band gap shift of CVD grown monolayers of MoS₂, proving that low-energy argon sputtering may have significant potential for the activation, functionalization, and modification of MoS₂ layers