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Electrical properties and mechanical stability of anchoring groups for single-molecule electronics
- Source :
- Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, Vol 6, Iss 1, Pp 1558-1567 (2015), Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, 6, 2015
- Publication Year :
- 2015
- Publisher :
- Beilstein-Institut, 2015.
-
Abstract
- We report on an experimental investigation of transport through single molecules, trapped between two gold nano-electrodes fabricated with the mechanically controlled break junction (MCBJ) technique. The four molecules studied share the same core structure, namely oligo(phenylene ethynylene) (OPE3), while having different aurophilic anchoring groups: thiol (SAc), methyl sulfide (SMe), pyridyl (Py) and amine (NH2). The focus of this paper is on the combined characterization of the electrical and mechanical properties determined by the anchoring groups. From conductance histograms we find that thiol anchored molecules provide the highest conductance; a single-level model fit to current–voltage characteristics suggests that SAc groups exhibit a higher electronic coupling to the electrodes, together with better level alignment than the other three groups. An analysis of the mechanical stability, recording the lifetime in a self-breaking method, shows that Py and SAc yield the most stable junctions while SMe form short-lived junctions. Density functional theory combined with non-equlibrium Green’s function calculations help in elucidating the experimental findings.
- Subjects :
- Current-voltage
Materials science
molecular electronics
General Physics and Astronomy
Anchoring
coherent transport
Nanotechnology
02 engineering and technology
single molecule
010402 general chemistry
lcsh:Chemical technology
01 natural sciences
lcsh:Technology
Full Research Paper
currentvoltage
current–voltage
Phenylene
Molecule
General Materials Science
lcsh:TP1-1185
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
lcsh:Science
lcsh:T
Conductance
Molecular electronics
Molecular scale electronics
021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology
Anchoring groups
Coherent transport
Single molecule
lcsh:QC1-999
0104 chemical sciences
Nanoscience
Crystallography
anchoring groups
Density functional theory
lcsh:Q
0210 nano-technology
Break junction
lcsh:Physics
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 21904286
- Volume :
- 6
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....e06c516e3d9c92087561d7d8bbfa579b