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Single-molecule diodes

The environment does the trick

Nature Nanotechnology volume 10, pages 486–487 (2015)Cite this article

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Single-molecule junctions with high rectification ratios can be realized by exposing different electrode surface areas to an ionic liquid.

The miniaturization of electronic devices reached the molecular scale in the 1990s, marking the beginning of a new field of nanoscience with potential technological implications1. Since then, molecular electronics experiments using metal–molecule–metal junctions have provided insights on the charge and energy transport mechanisms in molecular systems and have offered hope that molecules could be used as active elements in nanoscale devices. In fact, it has been demonstrated that molecular junctions can mimic standard components of today's microelectronics, such as single-electron transistors2, memory elements3, or photoswitches4. However, the realization of single-molecule diodes, one of the most basic electronic elements, has remained largely elusive. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Latha Venkataraman and colleagues — based at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley — now provide a convincing demonstration that high current rectification at low operating voltages can be achieved in single-molecule junctions by carrying out the experiments in the presence of polar solvents5. In particular, the researchers show that by exposing considerably different electrode areas to an ionic medium, junctions with symmetric molecules can behave as single-molecule diodes with rectification ratios that are an order of magnitude higher than previously reported.

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Figure 1: A single-molecule diode and its rectification mechanism.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Juan Carlos Cuevas is in the Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada and Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049 Madrid, Spain,

    Juan Carlos Cuevas

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  1. Juan Carlos Cuevas
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Correspondence to Juan Carlos Cuevas.

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Cuevas, J. The environment does the trick. Nature Nanotech 10, 486–487 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.98

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