Note:The published version in Nature Materials contains an extended manuscript and comprehensive supplementary information. . One of the primary experimental methods to reveal the mechanisms behind electronic transport through metal-molecule interfaces is the study of conductance as a function of molecule length in molecular junctions [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] . Previous studies focused on transport governed either by coherent tunneling or hopping, both at low conductance. However, the upper limit of conductance across molecular junctions has not been explored, despite the great potential for efficient information transfer, charge injection and recombination processes at high conductance. Here, we study the conductance properties of highly transmitting metal-molecule-metal interfaces, using a series of single-molecule junctions based on oligoacenes with increasing length. We find that the conductance saturates at an upper limit where it is independent of molecule length. Furthermore, we show that this upper limit can be controlled by the character of the orbital hybridization at the metal-molecule interface. Using two prototype systems, in which the molecules are contacted by either Ag or Pt electrodes, we reveal two different origins for the saturation of conductance. In the case of Ag-based molecular junctions, the conductance saturation is ascribed to a competition between energy level alignment and level broadening, while in the case of Pt-based junctions, the saturation is attributed to a band-like transport. The results are explained by an intuitive model, backed by ab-initio transport calculations. Our findings shed light on the mechanisms that constrain the conductance at the high transmission limit, providing guiding principles for the design of highly conductive metal-molecule interfaces.In order to study the conductance characteristics of highly transmitting molecular junctions, strong electronic coupling is required between the molecule and the electrodes, as well as within the molecule itself 10,11,15,16 . These conditions are achieved in this work by direct hybridization between the π-orbitals of the oligoacene molecules and the frontier orbitals of the metal electrodes, without employing anchoring groups such as thiols that can act as spacers between the orbitals of the molecular backbone and the frontier orbitals of the metal 13,15 . The oligoacenes (Fig. 1a) are linear π-conjugated molecules that can be viewed as short graphene nanoribbons 17 , whose electronic structure is subject to an ongoing research 18 . We study the evolution of conductance as a function of molecule length and compare the conductance characteristics of

No abstract

We present an experimental procedure for obtaining the conduction channels of lowdimensional conductors based on shot noise measurements. The transmission coefficient for each channel is determined numerically from the measured conductance and Fano factor. The channel analysis is demonstrated for atomic contacts of Ag, Au, Al and Pt, showing their channel evolution as a function of conductance and mechanical elongation. This approach can be readily applied to map the conduction channels in a wide range of nanoscale conductors under different conditions. The conductance of a coherent quantum conductor can be described as a sum of independent conduction channels, originating from the quantization of the electron wave modes within the

Using a break junction technique, we find a clear signature for the formation of conducting hybrid junctions composed of a single organic molecule (benzene, naphthalene, or anthracene) connected to chains of platinum atoms. The hybrid junctions exhibit metallic-like conductance (~0.1-1G0), which is rather insensitive to further elongation by additional atoms. At low bias voltage the hybrid junctions can be elongated significantly beyond the length of the bare atomic chains. Ab initio calculations reveal that benzene based hybrid junctions have a significant binding energy and high structural flexibility that may contribute to the survival of the hybrid junction during the elongation process. The fabrication of hybrid junctions opens the way for combining the different properties of atomic chains and organic molecules to realize a new class of atomic scale interfaces.

With the goal to elucidate the nature of spin-dependent electronic transport in ferromagnetic atomic contacts, we present here a combined experimental and theoretical study of the conductance and shot noise of metallic atomic contacts made of the 3d ferromagnetic materials Fe, Co, and Ni. For comparison, we also present the corresponding results for the noble metal Cu. Conductance and shot noise measurements, performed using a low-temperature break junction setup, show that in these ferromagnetic nanowires: (i) there is no conductance quantization of any kind, (ii) transport is dominated by several partially-open conduction channels, even in the case of single-atom contacts, and (iii) the Fano factor of large contacts saturates to values that clearly differs from those of monovalent (nonmagnetic) metals. We rationalize these observations with the help of a theoretical approach that combines molecular dynamics simulations to describe the junction formation with nonequilibrium Green's function techniques to compute the transport properties within the Landauer-Büttiker framework. Our theoretical approach successfully reproduces all the basic experimental results and it shows that all the observations can be traced back to the fact that the d bands of the minority-spin electrons play a fundamental role in the transport through ferromagnetic atomic-size contacts. These d bands give rise to partially open conduction channels for any contact size, which in turn lead naturally to the different observations described above. Thus, the transport picture for these nanoscale ferromagnetic wires that emerges from the ensemble of our results is clearly at variance with the well established conduction mechanism that governs the transport in macroscopic ferromagnetic wires, where the d bands are responsible for the magnetism but do not take part in the charge flow. These insights provide a fundamental framework for ferromagneticbased spintronics at the nanoscale.

Generating highly spin-polarized currents at the nanoscale is essential for spin current manipulations and spintronic applications. We find indications for up to 100% spin-polarized currents across nickel oxide atomic junctions formed between two nickel electrodes. The degree of spin polarization is probed by analyzing the shot noise resulting from the discrete statistics of spin-polarized electron transport. We show that spin filtering can be significantly enhanced by local chemical modifications at the single-atom level. This approach paves the way for effective manipulations of spin transport at the fundamental limit of miniaturization.

We investigate periodical oscillations in the conductance of suspended Au and Pt atomic chains during elongation under mechanical stress. Analysis of conductance and shot noise measurements reveals that the oscillations are mainly related to variations in a specific conduction channel as the chain undergoes transitions between zigzag and linear atomic configurations. The calculated local electronic structure shows that the oscillations originate from varying degrees of hybridization between the atomic orbitals along the chain as a function of the zigzag angle. These variations are highly dependent on the directionality and symmetry of the relevant orbitals, in agreement with the order-of-magnitude difference between the Pt and Au oscillation amplitudes observed in experiment. Our results demonstrate that the sensitivity of conductance to structural variations can be controlled by designing atomic-scale conductors in view of the directional interactions between atomic orbitals

No abstract