Using a non-contact atomic force microscope we track and manipulate the position of single electrons confined to atomic structures engineered from silicon dangling bonds on the hydrogen terminated silicon surface. An attractive tip surface interaction mechanically manipulates the equilibrium position of a surface silicon atom, causing rehybridization that stabilizes a negative charge at the dangling bond. This is applied to controllably switch the charge state of individual dangling bonds. Because this mechanism is based on short range interactions and can be performed without applied bias voltage, we maintain both site-specific selectivity and single-electron control. We extract the short range forces involved with this mechanism by subtracting the long range forces acquired on a dimer vacancy site. As a result of relaxation of the silicon lattice to accommodate negatively charged dangling bonds, we observe charge configurations of dangling bond structures that remain stable for many seconds at 4.5~K. Subsequently, we use charge manipulation to directly prepare the ground state and metastable charge configurations of dangling bond structures composed of up to six atoms.

中文翻译：

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启动和监视原子定义结构内单电子的演化

使用非接触式原子力显微镜，我们跟踪并操纵了单个电子的位置，该电子局限于氢封端的硅表面上由硅悬空键构成的原子结构。有吸引力的尖端表面相互作用机械地操纵了表面硅原子的平衡位置，从而引起了重新杂化作用，该杂化作用使悬空键处的负电荷稳定。这用于可控地切换单个悬空键的电荷状态。因为此机制基于短程相互作用，并且可以在不施加偏置电压的情况下执行，所以我们既保持了位点选择性，又保持了单电子控制。我们通过减去在二聚体空位上获得的远距离力来提取与该机制有关的近距离力。由于硅晶格弛豫以适应带负电荷的悬空键，我们观察到悬空键结构的电荷构型在4.5〜K下可保持稳定数秒。随后，我们使用电荷操纵直接制备由最多六个原子组成的悬空键结构的基态和亚稳电荷构型。