Journal
NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 226-231Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2011.20
Keywords
-
Funding
- Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy [DE-FG03-01ER45943]
- EU
- Div Of Civil, Mechanical, & Manufact Inn
- Directorate For Engineering [0856492] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In recent years, various single-molecule electronic components have been demonstrated(1). However, it remains difficult to predict accurately the conductance of a single molecule and to control the lateral coupling between the pi orbitals of the molecule and the orbitals of the electrodes attached to it. This lateral coupling is well known to cause broadening and shifting of the energy levels of the molecule; this, in turn, is expected to greatly modify the conductance of an electrodemolecule- electrode junction(2-6). Here, we demonstrate a new method, based on lateral coupling, to mechanically and reversibly control the conductance of a single-molecule junction by mechanically modulating the angle between a single pentaphenylene molecule bridged between two metal electrodes. Changing the angle of the molecule from a highly tilted state to an orientation nearly perpendicular to the electrodes changes the conductance by an order of magnitude, which is in qualitative agreement with theoretical models of molecular pi-orbital coupling to a metal electrode. The lateral coupling is also directly measured by applying a fast mechanical perturbation in the horizontal plane, thus ruling out changes in the contact geometry or molecular conformation as the source for the conductance change.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available