Picosecond time resolved conductance measurements of redox molecular junctions

Due to bandwidth limitations of state of the art electronics, the transient transport properties of molecular junctions are experimentally a terra incognita, which can only be explored if novel picosecond current-probing techniques are developed. Here we demonstrate one such approach: the laser pulse pair sequence scheme. The method is used to monitor in picosecond resolution the oxidation state of a redox molecule, 6-ferrocenyl-1-hexanethiol, within a junction and to quantify its redox rate constant, which is found to be (80 ps)(-1). Published by AIP Publishing.