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arXiv · 1706.09818

Estimating single molecule conductance from spontaneous evolution of a molecular contact

M. Gil·T. Malinowski·M. Iazykov·H. Klein
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Abstract

We present an original method to estimate the conductivity of a single molecule anchored to nanometric-sized metallic electrodes, using a Mechanically Controlled Break Junction (MCBJ) operated at room temperature in liquid. We record the conductance through the metal / molecules / metal nanocontact while keeping the metallic electrodes at a fixed distance. Taking advantage of thermal diffusion and electromigration, we let the contact naturally explore the more stable configurations around a chosen conductance value. The conductance of a single molecule is estimated from a statistical analysis of raw conductance and conductance standard deviation data for molecular contacts containing up to 14 molecules. The single molecule conductance values are interpreted as time-averaged conductance of an ensemble of conformers at thermal equilibrium.

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M. Gil, T. Malinowski, M. Iazykov, H. Klein. 2017-06-29. Estimating single molecule conductance from spontaneous evolution of a molecular contact. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5018252

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