1379575-47-9Relevant academic research and scientific papers
Silicon ring strain creates high-conductance pathways in single-molecule circuits
Su, Timothy A.,Widawsky, Jonathan R.,Li, Haixing,Klausen, Rebekka S.,Leighton, James L.,Steigerwald, Michael L.,Venkataraman, Latha,Nuckolls, Colin
supporting information, p. 18331 - 18334 (2014/01/06)
Here we demonstrate for the first time that strained silanes couple directly to gold electrodes in break-junction conductance measurements. We find that strained silicon molecular wires terminated by alkyl sulfide aurophiles behave effectively as single-molecule parallel circuits with competing sulfur-to-sulfur (low G) and sulfur-to-silacycle (high G) pathways. We can switch off the high conducting sulfur-to-silacycle pathway by altering the environment of the electrode surface to disable the Au-silacycle coupling. Additionally, we can switch between conductive pathways in a single molecular junction by modulating the tip-substrate electrode distance. This study provides a new molecular design to control electronics in silicon-based single molecule wires.
Conductive molecular silicon
Klausen, Rebekka S.,Widawsky, Jonathan R.,Steigerwald, Michael L.,Venkataraman, Latha,Nuckolls, Colin
, p. 4541 - 4544 (2012/04/23)
Bulk silicon, the bedrock of information technology, consists of the deceptively simple electronic structure of just Si-Si σ bonds. Diamond has the same lattice structure as silicon, yet the two materials have dramatically different electronic properties. Here we report the specific synthesis and electrical characterization of a class of molecules, oligosilanes, that contain strongly interacting Si-Si σ bonds, the essential components of the bulk semiconductor. We used the scanning tunneling microscope-based break-junction technique to compare the single-molecule conductance of these oligosilanes to those of alkanes. We found that the molecular conductance decreases exponentially with increasing chain length with a decay constant β = 0.27 ± 0.01 A-1, comparable to that of a conjugated chain of C = C π bonds. This result demonstrates the profound implications of σ conjugation for the conductivity of silicon.
