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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus
MA 37: Transport: Molecular Electronics and Photonics 1
(Joint session of CPP, DS, HL, MA, O and TT organized by TT)
MA 37.1: Talk
Thursday, March 10, 2016, 09:30–09:45, H23
Pulling and Stretching a Molecular Wire to Tune its Conductance — •Gaël Reecht1, 4, Hervé Bulou1, Fabrice Scheurer1, Virginie Speisser1, Fabrice Mathevet2, César González3, Yannick J. Dappe3, and Guillaume Schull1 — 1IPCMS, Strasbourg, France — 2Laboratoire de Chimie des Polymères, Paris, France — 3CEA IRAMIS, Saclay, France — 4Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Molecular junctions are perceived as the ultimate step toward the miniaturization of electronic components based on organic materials. Here, a low temperature scanning tunnelling microscope is used to lift a polythiophene wire from a Au(111) surface while measuring the current traversing the molecular junction. Conductance traces recorded during the lifting procedures reveal abrupt increases of the current intensity, which we associate to detachments of the wire subunits from the surface, in apparent contradiction with the expected exponential decrease of the conductance with wire length. With, ab initio simulations we reproduce the experimental data and demonstrate that this unexpected behavior is due to release of mechanical stress in the wire. Therefore, with the high control ability of the STM, by stretching the suspended molecular wire, we are able to tune its conductance properties.