2005/09/26 by Adi Salomon, Till Boecking, Olga Girshevitz +6 · 4 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Semiconductor materials and devices #Semiconductor materials and interfaces #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.95.266807
13 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2005/09/26 · openalex publication_date 2005/12/23 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Electron transport through Si-C bound alkyl chains, sandwiched between and Hg, is characterized by two distinct types of barriers, each dominating in a different voltage range. At low voltage, the current depends strongly on temperature but not on molecular length, suggesting transport by thermionic emission over a barrier in the Si. At higher voltage, the current decreases exponentially with molecular length, suggesting transport limited by tunneling through the molecules. The tunnel barrier is estimated, from transport and photoemission data, to be approximately 1.5 eV with a 0.25m(e) effective mass.