Transition voltage spectroscopy and the nature of vacuum tunneling.

Transition voltage spectroscopy (TVS) has been proposed as a tool to analyze charge transport through molecular junctions. We extend TVS to Au-vacuum-Au junctions and study the distance dependence of the transition voltage V(t)(d) for clean electrodes in cryogenic vacuum. On the one hand, this allows us to provide an important reference for V(t)(d) measurements on molecular junctions. On the other hand, we show that TVS forms a simple and powerful test for vacuum tunneling models.