Conductance of small molecular junctions.
A new method of fabricating small metal-molecule-metal junctions is developed, approaching the single-molecule limit. The conductance of different conjugated molecules in a broad temperature, source-drain, and gate voltage regime is reported. At low temperature, all investigated molecules display sharp conductance steps periodic in source-drain voltage. The position of these steps can be controlled by a gate potential. The spacing corresponds to the energy of the lowest molecular vibrations. These results show that the low-bias conductance of molecules is dominated by resonant tunneling through coupled electronic and vibration levels.
Zhitenev
N B
NB
Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974, USA.
Meng
H
H
Bao
Z
Z