Contact effects in single-molecule conduction

Electronic components based on single organic molecules hold great promise for applications in sensing and information processing. To make progress in this area, a good understanding of the conduction process at the single-molecule level is required. The authors present results of our investigations of single-molecule conduction. Theoretical modeling reveals that small variations in the atomic contact configuration can have a pronounced effect on the conduction through a molecular junction. This is reflected in experimental results for the single-molecule conduction of alkanes that are bound to gold electrodes via end groups with different bond strength.