TY - JOUR
T1 - Molecular rectification
T2 - Why is it so rare?
AU - Mujica, Vladimiro
AU - Ratner, Mark A.
AU - Nitzan, Abraham
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the Chemistry Divisions of the NSF and ONR, to the DoD/MURI Program, and to the Moletronics Program of DARPA for support.
PY - 2002/8/15
Y1 - 2002/8/15
N2 - Although conductance measurements of single molecule and few molecules junctions are currently being reported, there is a striking rarity of molecular rectification in these reports. Molecular rectification can be defined as the absence of inversion symmetry, I(V) = -I(-V), where I and V are the measured current and applied voltage. In molecular junctions of the form metal/molecule/metal, there is generally an absence of structural mirror symmetry. One might then expect rectification arising from this asymmetrical structure. We suggest here that molecular rectification in tunneling junctions is generally difficult to achieve, essentially because deformation of the structure in the presence of finite voltage will result in effectively symmetric voltage profiles for forward and reverse biases.
AB - Although conductance measurements of single molecule and few molecules junctions are currently being reported, there is a striking rarity of molecular rectification in these reports. Molecular rectification can be defined as the absence of inversion symmetry, I(V) = -I(-V), where I and V are the measured current and applied voltage. In molecular junctions of the form metal/molecule/metal, there is generally an absence of structural mirror symmetry. One might then expect rectification arising from this asymmetrical structure. We suggest here that molecular rectification in tunneling junctions is generally difficult to achieve, essentially because deformation of the structure in the presence of finite voltage will result in effectively symmetric voltage profiles for forward and reverse biases.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0037103111&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0037103111&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/S0301-0104(02)00494-9
DO - 10.1016/S0301-0104(02)00494-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0037103111
VL - 281
SP - 147
EP - 150
JO - Chemical Physics
JF - Chemical Physics
SN - 0301-0104
IS - 2-3
ER -