[kragen]

That's a different kind of clock, and its clock mechanism is a gradual and somewhat random decrease in the concentration of one reagent until it crosses a threshold which changes the equilibrium constant of iodine. It isn't really related to the kind of clock you use for digital logic design, which is a periodic oscillation whose purpose is generally to make your design insensitive to glitches. Usually you care about glitches because they could cause incorrect state transitions, but in this case the primary concern is that they would cause irreversible power dissipation.

The experiment was conducted at 7K so the molecule would stick to the metal instead of shaking around randomly like a punk in a mosh pit and then flying off into space.

[gsf_emergency]

Yeah you're probably right about the clocks but I hope that wouldn't stop people from trying :)

>The experiment was conducted at 7K so the molecule

Br is good at sticking to Ag so I suspect the 7K is mainly (besides issues connected to their AFM^W STM setup) because the Euro dudes love ORNL's cryo engineering :)

[kragen]

Br's orbitals are filled here because it's covalently bonded to a carbon, so it's basically krypton. Experiments with moving atoms around on surfaces with STMs are always done at cryogenic temperatures because that's the only way to do them.

[gsf_emergency]

>. Hence, the Br atoms kept the molecules on track, likely because their interaction with the surface substantially contributed to the barrier for molecular rotation

Yeah that's a reason people prefer AFM (but then they won't be able to do manipulation)?

[Br- is a "good leaving group", not so much at 7K maybe. You are also right in that, above all, they don't want their molecule sticking (irreversibly) to the (tungsten) tip ]