Thiol-metal bonding is a tempting tool for studying how electrons move through molecules. It creates self-assembled monolayer films (SAMs) useful in chemistry, physics, biology, and materials science. One method, exposing gold to solutions containing alkanethiols, relies on the sulfides reorganizing themselves and depositing alkanes of interest on the metal surface. But they remain mysterious, because on larger scales, useful for molecular electronics, they form multiple types of bonds, each with their own properties, including different tunneling charge-transport.
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