Charge transport through self-assembled monolayers with eutectic gallium-indium top contacts
PhD ceremony: | Mr D. Fracasso |
When: | February 07, 2014 |
Start: | 11:00 |
Supervisor: | prof. dr. J.C. (Kees) Hummelen |
Co-supervisor: | prof. dr. R.C. (Ryan) Chiechi |
Where: | Academy building RUG |
Faculty: | Science and Engineering |
In this thesis a broad overview of tunneling junctions
comprising SAMs with eutectic Gallium Indium as top electrode is
presented.
I at first introduce the concepts of Molecular Electronics, SAMs,
tunneling junctions, and compared two techniques to measure charge
transport properties, Hg-drop and EGaIn, which have their state of
matter in common: being liquid at room temperature. EGaIn, despite
being a relatively new technique in the world of Molecular
Electronics, rapidly caught the attention of several research
laboratories.
Controlling molecular conductance is an essential requirement on
the road towards functional molecular electronic devices. The field
of molecular electronics is generally interested in active
molecular components and new functionalities. An important issue in
molecular electronics is the understanding on how the molecules
govern the device performance. The understanding of the electrical
properties is often hidden behind the complexity of the devices
architecture, in some cases the performances of the device are more
important than the deeper understanding, i.e. function trumps
spectroscopy. I showed in this thesis how EGaIn can be used as
conformal top electrode to uncover new molecular phenomena. The
goal of my research was not to develop devices for industrial
application, rather to characterize SAMs electrically and correlate
chemical structures to functionalities.