Abstract
Electron tunneling through self-assembled monolayers (SAM's) of alkanethiols is investigated using nanometer-scale devices. Temperature-dependent current-voltage measurements are performed on alkanethiol SAM's to distinguish between different conduction mechanisms. Temperature-independent electron transport is observed, proving that tunneling is the dominant conduction mechanism of alkanethiols, as well as exhibiting an exponential dependence of tunneling current on the molecule length with a decay coefficient \ensuremath{\beta}. From the bias dependence of \ensuremath{\beta}, a barrier height ${\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{B}$ of $1.39\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.01\mathrm{eV}$ and a zero-field decay coefficient ${\ensuremath{\beta}}_{0}$ of $0.79\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.01{\AA{}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ are determined for alkanethiols.
Keywords
Quantum tunnellingMonolayerThermal conductionElectronConduction electronPhysicsCondensed matter physicsMaterials scienceBETA (programming language)NanotechnologyQuantum mechanics
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Publication Info
- Year
- 2003
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 68
- Issue
- 3
- Citations
- 641
- Access
- Closed
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Cite This
Wenyong Wang,
Takhee Lee,
Mark A. Reed
(2003).
Mechanism of electron conduction in self-assembled alkanethiol monolayer devices.
Physical review. B, Condensed matter
, 68
(3)
.
https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.68.035416
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1103/physrevb.68.035416