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Characterizing and Manipulating Individual Molecules by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Bin Li, J. G. Hou* Hefei National Laboratory For Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Anhui, Hefei 230026, China Abstract Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) can provide us the special means to characterize the locally physical and chemical properties of individual molecules, and even help us to manipulate the individual molecules for constructing new molecule-scale devices. Here we have adopted two new types of STM techniques to characterize the encapsulated metal atom inside a fullerene cage, and to construct a molecule-device with strong Kondo effect, respectively. The spatially dI/dV mapping spectra were used to unveil the energy-resolved metal-cage hybrid states of individual Dy@C82 molecule, and the important information about the spatial position of Dy atom inside the cage and the Dy-cage interaction was revealed. The high-voltage pulse by STM tip is controlled to induce the dehydrogenation of Co phthalocyanine molecule and change its adsorption configuration on Au(111) surface, so as to recover Kondo effect that disappears in the case of intact adsorbed molecule. Keywords: Individual molecule, Scanning tunneling microscopy, Hybrid state, Kondo effect * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jghou@ustc.edu.cn 1. INTRODUCTION As an advanced experimental technique, scanning probe microscopy (SPM) based on the locally detecting ability of probe has provided lots of new methods for us to manage the nano-world due to the properties of its “seeing” and “moving” atoms and individual molecules directly. Recent developments in experiment and theory of SPM have supported that researchers can explore an extended range of nanostructures including the individual molecules, and have revealed many exciting physical, chemical, mechanical and electronic phenomena and mechanisms. A typical SPM is the well-known scanning tunneling