Journal Article10.1002/ANIE.201402343
Orientation‐Controlled Single‐Molecule Junctions
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TL;DR: It is suggested that long-range ordered structures, which hold the aromatic ring in place and parallel to the surface, are essential to increase probability of the formation of orientation-controlled molecular junctions.
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Abstract: The conductivity of a single aromatic ring, perpen- dicular to its plane, is determined using a new strategy under ambient conditions and at room temperature by a combination of molecular assembly, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) imaging, and STM break junction (STM-BJ) techniques. The construction of such molecular junctions exploits the forma- tion of highly ordered structures of flat-oriented mesitylene molecules on Au(111) to enable direct tip/p contacts, a result that is not possible by conventional methods. The measured conductance of Au/p/Au junction is about 0.1 Go, two orders of magnitude higher than the conductance of phenyl rings connected to the electrodes by standard anchoring groups. Our experiments suggest that long-range ordered structures, which hold the aromatic ring in place and parallel to the surface, are essential to increase probability of the formation of orientation-controlled molecular junctions. Molecular-scale electronic devices usually are designed by wiring a single molecule between two metal electrodes (1, 2) most commonly using mechanically controlled break junc- tions (MCBJ), or scanning probe microscopy, for example, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Single-molecule con- ductance (SMC) studies are carried out in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) (3-7) or under ambient conditions (8-13) and focus on molecules with functional groups that provide efficient electronic coupling and bind the organic molecular backbone to the electrodes. (14) However, conductance is sensitive to the atomic level details of the molecule-electrode contact (15) so that the anchoring groups typically end up decreasing the single-molecule junction conductivity. Thus, creating well- defined, highly conductive molecular junctions is challeng- ing. (16-23)
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Citations
Single-Molecule Junctions Based on Nitrile-Terminated Biphenyls
Linda A. Zotti,Artem Mishchenko,David Vonlanthen,Marius Bürkle,Fabian Pauly,Juan Carlos Cuevas,Marcel Mayor,Thomas Wandlowski +7 more
- 01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: It is found both theoretically and experimentally that the conductance of the molecular junctions is roughly proportional to the square of the cosine of the torsion angle between the two benzene rings of the biphenyl core, which demonstrates the robustness of this structure-conductance relationship.
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Electric Field-Induced Assembly in Single-Stacking Terphenyl Junctions.
Yongxiang Tang,Yu Zhou,Dahai Zhou,Yaorong Chen,Zongyuan Xiao,Jia Shi,Junyang Liu,Wenjing Hong +7 more
TL;DR: This study demonstrates an electric field-induced stacking effect between two molecules using the scanning tunneling microscope break junction (STM-BJ) technique and finds an increase in the stacking probability with increasing intensity of the electric field.
83
Non-exponential Length Dependence of Conductance in Iodide-Terminated Oligothiophene Single-Molecule Tunneling Junctions.
Limin Xiang,Thomas Hines,Julio L. Palma,Xuefeng Lu,Vladimiro Mujica,Mark A. Ratner,Gang Zhou,Nongjian Tao +7 more
TL;DR: X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, stretching length measurement, and theoretical calculations show that the non-exponential length dependence is due to a transition in the binding geometry of the molecule to the electrodes in the molecular junctions as the length increases.
72
Single-Molecule Conductance Studies of Organometallic Complexes Bearing 3-Thienyl Contacting Groups.
Sören Bock,Oday A. Al-Owaedi,Oday A. Al-Owaedi,Samantha G. Eaves,Samantha G. Eaves,David C. Milan,Mario Lemmer,Brian W. Skelton,Henrry M. Osorio,Henrry M. Osorio,Richard J. Nichols,Simon J. Higgins,Pilar Cea,Nicholas J. Long,Tim Albrecht,Santiago Martín,Colin J. Lambert,Paul J. Low +17 more
TL;DR: The combination of similarly structured HOMOs and non‐resonant tunnelling mechanism accounts for the remarkably similar conductance values across the chemically distinct members of the family 2–5.
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Energy-Level Alignment for Single-Molecule Conductance of Extended Metal-Atom Chains
Ta‐Cheng Ting,Liang-Yan Hsu,Min-Jie Huang,Er-Chien Horng,Hao-Cheng Lu,Chan-Hsiang Hsu,Ching‐Hong Jiang,Bih-Yaw Jin,Shie-Ming Peng,Shie-Ming Peng,Chun-hsien Chen +10 more
TL;DR: In this work, single-molecule junctions of organometallic compounds with five metal centers joined in a collinear fashion were analyzed and the mechanism is described in terms of a two-level model involving co-tunneling and sequential tunneling processes.
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