title: Conductance of single cobalt chalcogenide cluster junctions.
abstract: Understanding the electrical properties of semiconducting quantum dot devices have been limited due to the variability of their size/composition and the chemistry of ligand/electrode binding. Furthermore, to probe their electrical conduction properties and its dependence on ligand/electrode binding, measurements must be carried out at the single dot/cluster level. Herein we report scanning tunneling microscope based break junction measurements of cobalt chalcogenide clusters with Te, Se and S to probe the conductance properties. Our measured conductance trends show that the Co-Te based clusters have the highest conductance while the Co-S clusters the lowest. These trends are in very good agreement with cyclic voltammetry measurements of the first oxidation potentials and with density functional theory calculations of their HOMO-LUMO gaps.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Brycelyn M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Boardman
authors.forename: Jonathan R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Widawsky
authors.forename: Young S
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Christine L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Schenck
authors.forename: Latha
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Venkataraman
authors.forename: Michael L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Steigerwald
authors.forename: Colin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Nuckolls