Covalently bonded single-molecule junctions with stable and reversible photoswitched conductivity

Chuancheng Jia; Agostino Migliore; Na Xin; Shaoyun Huang; Jinying Wang; Qi Yang; Shuopei Wang; Hongliang Chen; Duoming Wang; Boyong Feng; Zhirong Liu; Guangyu Zhang; Da-Hui Qu; He Tian; Mark A Ratner; H Q Xu; Abraham Nitzan; Xuefeng Guo

doi:10.1126/science.aaf6298

Covalently bonded single-molecule junctions with stable and reversible photoswitched conductivity

Science. 2016 Jun 17;352(6292):1443-5. doi: 10.1126/science.aaf6298.

Authors

Chuancheng Jia¹, Agostino Migliore², Na Xin¹, Shaoyun Huang³, Jinying Wang¹, Qi Yang³, Shuopei Wang⁴, Hongliang Chen¹, Duoming Wang⁴, Boyong Feng³, Zhirong Liu¹, Guangyu Zhang⁴, Da-Hui Qu⁵, He Tian⁵, Mark A Ratner⁶, H Q Xu⁷, Abraham Nitzan⁸, Xuefeng Guo⁹

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China.
² Department of Chemistry, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
³ Department of Electronics and Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China.
⁴ Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
⁵ Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Institute of Fine Chemicals, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, P. R. China.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
⁷ Department of Electronics and Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China. guoxf@pku.edu.cn anitzan@sas.upenn.edu hqxu@pku.edu.cn.
⁸ Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323, USA. School of Chemistry, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel. guoxf@pku.edu.cn anitzan@sas.upenn.edu hqxu@pku.edu.cn.
⁹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China. guoxf@pku.edu.cn anitzan@sas.upenn.edu hqxu@pku.edu.cn.

PMID: 27313042
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf6298

Abstract

Through molecular engineering, single diarylethenes were covalently sandwiched between graphene electrodes to form stable molecular conduction junctions. Our experimental and theoretical studies of these junctions consistently show and interpret reversible conductance photoswitching at room temperature and stochastic switching between different conductive states at low temperature at a single-molecule level. We demonstrate a fully reversible, two-mode, single-molecule electrical switch with unprecedented levels of accuracy (on/off ratio of ~100), stability (over a year), and reproducibility (46 devices with more than 100 cycles for photoswitching and ~10(5) to 10(6) cycles for stochastic switching).

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.