title: Chemical wiring and soldering toward all-molecule electronic circuitry.
abstract: Key to single-molecule electronics is connecting functional molecules to each other using conductive nanowires. This involves two issues: how to create conductive nanowires at designated positions, and how to ensure chemical bonding between the nanowires and functional molecules. Here, we present a novel method that solves both issues. Relevant functional molecules are placed on a self-assembled monolayer of diacetylene compound. A probe tip of a scanning tunneling microscope is then positioned on the molecular row of the diacetylene compound to which the functional molecule is adsorbed, and a conductive polydiacetylene nanowire is fabricated by initiating chain polymerization by stimulation with the tip. Since the front edge of chain polymerization necessarily has a reactive chemical species, the created polymer nanowire forms chemical bonding with an encountered molecular element. We name this spontaneous reaction "chemical soldering". First-principles theoretical calculations are used to investigate the structures and electronic properties of the connection. We demonstrate that two conductive polymer nanowires are connected to a single phthalocyanine molecule. A resonant tunneling diode formed by this method is discussed.
authors.affiliation: International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan. okawa.yuji@nims.go.jp
authors.forename: Yuji
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Okawa
authors.forename: Swapan K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Mandal
authors.forename: Chunping
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Yoshitaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tateyama
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Goedecker
authors.forename: Shigeru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tsukamoto
authors.forename: Tsuyoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hasegawa
authors.forename: James K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Gimzewski
authors.forename: Masakazu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Aono