title: Carbon-fiber tips for scanning probe microscopes and molecular electronics experiments.
abstract: We fabricate and characterize carbon-fiber tips for their use in combined scanning tunneling and force microscopy based on piezoelectric quartz tuning fork force sensors. An electrochemical fabrication procedure to etch the tips is used to yield reproducible sub-100-nm apex. We also study electron transport through single-molecule junctions formed by a single octanethiol molecule bonded by the thiol anchoring group to a gold electrode and linked to a carbon tip by the methyl group. We observe the presence of conductance plateaus during the stretching of the molecular bridge, which is the signature of the formation of a molecular junction.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Física de la Materia Condensada (C-III), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Campus de Cantoblanco, Madrid, E-28049, Spain. gabino.rubio@uam.es.
authors.forename: Gabino
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rubio-Bollinger
authors.forename: Andres
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Castellanos-Gomez
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bilan
authors.forename: Linda A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Zotti
authors.forename: Carlos R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Arroyo
authors.forename: Nicolás
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Agraït
authors.forename: Juan Carlos
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Cuevas