Microfabrication of a mechanically controllable break junction in silicon

Ph.D. THESIS Investigation of atomic-sized conductors with the mechanically controllable break junction technique

Tuning the Kondo effect with a mechanically controllable break junction.

We study electron transport through C(60) molecules in the Kondo regime using a mechanically controllable break junction. By varying the electrode spacing, we are able to change both the width and the height of the Kondo resonance, indicating modification of the Kondo temperature and the relative strength of coupling to the two electrodes. The linear conductance as a function of T/T(K) agrees w...

Break junction under electrochemical gating: testbed for single-molecule electronics.

Molecular electronics aims to construct functional molecular devices at the single-molecule scale. One of the major challenges is to construct a single-molecule junction and to further manipulate the charge transport through the molecular junction. Break junction techniques, including STM break junctions and mechanically controllable break junctions are considered as testbed to investigate and ...

Study of molecular junctions with a combined surface-enhanced Raman and mechanically controllable break junction method.

We have developed a combined surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and break junction method to detect and characterize molecules between two microfabricated electrodes separated with a gap that can be continuously adjusted from a few angstroms to nanometers. It allows us to obtain a vibrational fingerprint of the adjustable molecular junction while performing electron transport measuremen...

Resonant tunneling through a C60 molecular junction in liquid environment

We present electronic transport measurements through thiolated C60 molecules in liquid environment. The molecules were placed within a mechanically controllable break junction using a single anchoring group per molecule. When varying the electrode separation of the C60-modified junctions, we observed a peak in the conductance traces. The shape of the curves is strongly influenced by the environ...