Revealing the Nature of Molecule鈥揈lectrode Contact in Tunneling Junctions Using Raw Data Heat Maps

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• 作者：Jacob Sporrer ; Jiahao Chen ; Zhengjia Wang ; Martin M. Thuo
• 刊名：The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：December 17, 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：6
• 期：24
• 页码：4952-4958
• 全文大小：526K
• ISSN：1948-7185

文摘

Mechanistic understanding of charge transport through molecular tunnel junctions requires reproducible and statistically relevant data sets. This challenge has been overcome by development of large area junctions, especially those based on liquid-metal physi-sorbed top-electrodes, such as eutectic gallium鈥搃ndium. A challenge with these junctions, however, is an inability to diagnose the quality of contact between the top-electrode and the SAMs. Since tunneling currents are dependent on the distance between the two electrodes, we demonstrate that by analyzing all raw unfitted data derived from a measurement using heat-maps, one can deduce the quality of contact and other minor bias-dependent fluctuations in the charge transport behavior. We demonstrate that the use of 3D plots would be challenging to interpret, but adoption of heat maps clearly captures details on junction quality irrespective of the total size of the data set or molecules used. We propose representation of raw data, rather than reliance on statistics, as proof of quality junctions.