Absence of Strong Gate Effects in Electrical Measurements on Phenylene-Based Conjugated Molecules

Abstract

The electronic transport characteristics of self-assembled monolayers of phenylene-based π-conjugated molecules were measured in a threeterminal device geometry. The short (∼1 nm) molecules were connected between two gold electrodes with a nearby Al 2 O 3 /Al gate electrode. It was possible to fabricate working devices using three of the five molecules investigated. The other two types of molecules led to devices where the Au electrodes were shorted together. Current−voltage characteristics as a function of the gate voltage are presented for the other three molecules. For some devices with 1,3-benzenedithiol, a weak gate effect was observed but no gating effect was observed for devices fabricated with the other molecules. The results are in strong contrast with those reported by Scho 1n et al.

Correlated Electron Transport in Molecular Electronics

“…In this formula T is the transmission coefficient of a single-electron wave function r, so these approaches calculate single-electron wave functions on the molecular junction using an effective single-electron potential. However, the currents flowing through molecular scale systems are consistently predicted to be several orders of magnitude larger than experimentally reported values [1,3,6]. By formulating scattering boundary conditions appropriate to many-body wave functions , we are able to perform explicitly correlated calculations using the many-body HamiltonianĤ H which give current magnitudes close to experiment for the prototypical molecular electronics system, benzene-dithiol bonded between two gold contacts.…”

Charging-induced asymmetry in molecular conductors

“…It should be noted that the nature of conduction could possibly be identified by other techniques, e.g., by using thermoelectric 28 or gating effects. 29 It is worthwhile pointing out that the I-V asymmetry discussed in this paper cannot be explained solely in terms of asymmetry in the Laplace potential, neglecting charging effects altogether. Asymmetric charging gives conductance peaks of different heights at same voltage values (see Fig.…”

Control of topography, stress and diffusion at molecule–metal interfaces

“…We use small shadow masks defined within a stack of SiO 2 /SiN x /SiO 2 layers grown on degenerately doped Si substrates to obtain features below the lithographic limit [5,[13][14][15][16]. The fabrication of metal-SAM-metal junctions using the masks is illustrated in Figure 1.…”