Revealing the Nature of Molecule–Electrode Contact in Tunneling Junctions Using Raw Data Heat Maps

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2015-01-01
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Sporrer, Jacob
Chen, Jiahao
Wang, Zhengjia
Thuo, Martin
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Materials Science and Engineering
Materials engineers create new materials and improve existing materials. Everything is limited by the materials that are used to produce it. Materials engineers understand the relationship between the properties of a material and its internal structure — from the macro level down to the atomic level. The better the materials, the better the end result — it’s as simple as that.
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Materials Science and EngineeringCenter for Bioplastics and Biocomposites
Abstract

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–indium. 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.

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Reprinted with permission from Sporrer, Jacob, Jiahao Chen, Zhengjia Wang, and Martin M. Thuo. "Revealing the Nature of Molecule–Electrode Contact in Tunneling Junctions Using Raw Data Heat Maps." The journal of physical chemistry letters 6, no. 24 (2015): 4952-4958, doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.5b02300. Copyright 2015 American Chemical Society.

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Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2015
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