Conductance of Metal-Molecule-Metal Nanojunctions

摘要

A new method of fabricating small metal-molecule-metalrnjunctions is developed, approaching the single molecule limit. Thernconductance of different conjugated molecules in a broad temperature,rnsource-drain and gate voltage regime is reported. At low temperature, allrninvestigated molecules display sharp conductance steps periodic inrnsource-drain voltage. The position of these steps can be controlled by arngate potential. The spacing corresponds to the energy of the lowestrnmolecular vibrations. These results show that the low bias conductance ofrnmolecules is dominated by resonant tunneling through coupled electronicrnand vibration levels.