In-situ control of on-chip angstrom gaps, atomic switches, and molecular junctions by light irradiation

Playing catch and release with single molecules: mechanistic insights into plasmon-controlled nanogaps

“…Multiple surface effects due to optical irradiation have been reported that could influence the Δ G profile. They are the thermal atomic expansion of the electrode, 80 that can result in a size variation of the nanogap on the sub-Å scale, 81 and the creation of picocavities at RT. 82 The effects of the nearfield over the Au electrodes’ surface on our experiment is essentially avoided since the laser irradiation is activated prior to definition and stabilization of the interelectrode nanogap.…”

Smart Eutectic Gallium–Indium: From Properties to Applications

“…[83] Therefore, just like constructing the basis of computing by controlling the voltage of transistors, scientists can control the state of liquid metal by changing the external environment, and take its conductivity difference in different states as a controllable computing logic unit. [84] Further, EGaIn is widely used in coolants and thermal interface materials due to its high thermal conductivity (ten times larger than that of water). [85][86][87] As shown in Figure 3b, when the EGaIn microdroplets are dispersed in a silicone elastomer to form a liquid metal embedded elastomer (LMEE) composite material, the function of rapid cooling was achieved.…”

“…So far, the mature methods to measure the characteristics of molecular junctions include mechanically controllable break junctions (MCBJ), [84,176,177] scanning tunneling microscope break junctions (STM-BJ), [178,179] EGaIn-based molecular tunneling junctions (MTJs), [180,181] to name a few. [161,182] Currently, the most common way of incorporating EGaIn in ME devices is to measure the current-voltage characteristics of a molecular layer by either constructing a cone-shaped EGaIn tip or by using microfluidic channels filled with EGaIn as a top electrode to complete the MTJ.…”

“…[ 83 ] Therefore, just like constructing the basis of computing by controlling the voltage of transistors, scientists can control the state of liquid metal by changing the external environment, and take its conductivity difference in different states as a controllable computing logic unit. [ 84 ]…”

Stable Universal 1‐ and 2‐Input Single‐Molecule Logic Gates

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devices that employ external stimuli (e.g., chemical, light, magnetic, or electric field) to modulate electron transport through molecular junctions. [2,3,5,7,11,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] The modulations typically rely on stimulusinduced changes in molecular electronic states [5,14,22] and therefore the functional diversity and signal stability of molecular devices depend on the availability of different stable electronic states and efficient conversions between them. [2,3,7,23] As allelectrical-driven devices, three-terminal solid-state single-electron transistors (SETs) [17,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30] not only reflect the quantum behavior of intramolecular electron transport, such as Coulomb blockade, [19,20,31,32] Zeeman effect, [20,21] thermoelectric properties [25,26,33] and Kondo effect, [21,[34][35][36] but also have the unique advantage of controlling the molecular orbitals (MOs) by applying external electrostatic potentials,

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