Electrostatic Control over Temperature-dependent Tunnelling Across a Single-molecule Junction

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2016 May 24

PMID 27211787

Citations 11

Authors

Alvar R Garrigues

Lejia Wang

Enrique Del Barco

Christian A Nijhuis

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Understanding how the mechanism of charge transport through molecular tunnel junctions depends on temperature is crucial to control electronic function in molecular electronic devices. With just a few systems investigated as a function of bias and temperature so far, thermal effects in molecular tunnel junctions remain poorly understood. Here we report a detailed charge transport study of an individual redox-active ferrocene-based molecule over a wide range of temperatures and applied potentials. The results show the temperature dependence of the current to vary strongly as a function of the gate voltage. Specifically, the current across the molecule exponentially increases in the Coulomb blockade regime and decreases at the charge degeneracy points, while remaining temperature-independent at resonance. Our observations can be well accounted for by a formal single-level tunnelling model where the temperature dependence relies on the thermal broadening of the Fermi distributions of the electrons in the leads.

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