title: Electrochemically assisted fabrication of metal atomic wires and molecular junctions by MCBJ and STM-BJ methods.
abstract: Atomic wires (point contacts) and molecular junctions are two fundamental units in the fields of nanoelectronics and devices. This Minireview introduces our recent approaches aiming to develop versatile methods to fabricate and characterize these unique metallic and molecular structures reliably. Electrochemical methods are coupled with mechanically controllable break junction (EC-MCBJ) or scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) break junction (EC-STMBJ) methods to fabricate metallic point contacts and metal/molecule/metal junctions. With the designed electrodeposition method, the metal of interest (e.g. Au, Cu, Fe or Pd) is deposited in a controlled way on the original electrode pair, on a chip for MCBJ or on the STM tip, to make the metallic contact. Then, various metal atomic wires and molecular junctions can be fabricated and characterized systematically. Herein, we measured the quantized conductance through the construction of histograms of these metal atomic point contacts and of single molecules including benzene-1,4-dithiol (BDT), ferrocene-bisvinylphenylmethyl dithiol (Fc-VPM), 4,4'-bipyridine (BPY), 1,2-di(pyridin-4-yl)ethene (BPY-EE), and 1,2-di(pyridin-4-yl)ethane (BPY-EA). Finally, we briefly discussed the future of EC-MCBJ and EC-STM for nanoelectronics and devices, for example, for the formation of heterogeneous metal-based atomic point contacts and molecular junctions.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces and LIA CNRS XiamENS NanoBioChem, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, Fujian, China.
authors.forename: Jing-Hua
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Xiao-Shun
authors.initials: XS
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schöllhorn
authors.forename: Emmanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Maisonhaute
authors.forename: Zhao-Bin
authors.initials: ZB
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Fang-Zu
authors.initials: FZ
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Amatore
authors.forename: Bing-Wei
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Mao
authors.forename: Zhong-Qun
authors.initials: ZQ
authors.lastname: Tian
mesh_terms: D004563:Electrochemistry; D004566:Electrodes; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D008670:Metals / Q000737:chemistry*; D016252:Microscopy, Scanning Tunneling
chemical_list: D008670:Metals