Charge transport and rectification in arrays of SAM-based tunneling junctions. 2010

Christian A Nijhuis, and William F Reus, and Jabulani R Barber, and Michael D Dickey, and George M Whitesides
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.

This paper describes a method of fabrication that generates small arrays of tunneling junctions based on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs); these junctions have liquid-metal top-electrodes stabilized in microchannels and ultraflat (template-stripped) bottom-electrodes. The yield of junctions generated using this method is high (70-90%). The junctions examined incorporated SAMs of alkanethiolates having ferrocene termini (11-(ferrocenyl)-1-undecanethiol, SC(11)Fc); these junctions rectify currents with large rectification ratios (R), the majority of which fall within the range of 90-180. These values are larger than expected (theory predicts R <or= 20) and are larger than previous experimental measurements. SAMs of n-alkanethiolates without the Fc groups (SC(n-1)CH(3), with n = 12, 14, 16, or 18) do not rectify (R ranged from 1.0 to 5.0). These arrays enable the measurement of the electrical characteristics of the junctions as a function of chemical structure, voltage, and temperature over the range of 110-293 K, with statistically large numbers of data (N = 300-800). The mechanism of rectification with Fc-terminated SAMs seems to be charge transport processes that change with the polarity of bias: from tunneling (at one bias) to hopping combined with tunneling (at the opposite bias).

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D044085 Microfluidics The study of fluid channels and chambers of tiny dimensions of tens to hundreds of micrometers and volumes of nanoliters or picoliters. This is of interest in biological MICROCIRCULATION and used in MICROCHEMISTRY and INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES. Microfluidic
D036103 Nanotechnology The development and use of techniques to study physical phenomena and construct structures in the nanoscale size range or smaller. Nanotechnologies

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