Electron Transport in Self-Assembled Polymer Molecular Junctions

Wenping Hu, Jun Jiang, Hiroshi Nakashima, Yi Luo, Yoshiaki Kashimura, Ke-Qiu Chen, Z. Shuai, Kazuaki Furukawa, Wei Lu, Yunqi Liu, Daoben Zhu, and Keiichi Torimitsu
Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 027801 – Published 18 January 2006

Abstract

A molecular junction of a poly(p-phenyleneethynylene)s derivative with thioacetate end groups (TA-PPE) was fabricated by self-assembling. Nanogap electrodes made by electroplating technique was used to couple thiol end groups of TA-PPE molecules. Room temperature current-voltage characteristics of the molecular junction exhibited highly periodic, repeatable, and identical stepwise features. First-principles calculations suggest that one possibility for the equidistant step is due to the opening of different conducting channels that corresponds to the unoccupied molecular orbitals of the polymer in the junction. It is interesting to see that an 18 nm long polymer is of quantized electronic structures and behaves like a quantum transport device.

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  • Received 20 April 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.027801

©2006 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Wenping Hu1,4,*, Jun Jiang2,3, Hiroshi Nakashima4, Yi Luo2,†, Yoshiaki Kashimura4, Ke-Qiu Chen5, Z. Shuai1,*, Kazuaki Furukawa4, Wei Lu3, Yunqi Liu1, Daoben Zhu1,*, and Keiichi Torimitsu4

  • 1Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China
  • 2Theoretical Chemistry, Royal Institute of Technology, AlbaNova, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
  • 3National Laboratory for Infrared Physics, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200083, China
  • 4NTT Basic Research Laboratories, 3-1 Morinosato Wakamiya, Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0198, Japan
  • 5Department of Physics, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China

  • *To whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic address: huwp@iccas.ac.cn
  • To whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic address: luo@theochem.kth.se

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Issue

Vol. 96, Iss. 2 — 20 January 2006

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