Study of electron transfer in metal-alkanethiol SAM-metal junctions

As the basis of molecular electronic devices, more attentions have been concentrated on the electron transfer in single-molecule junctions. In present paper, molecular junctions were constructed by using a sandwich structure that consists of metal film/self-assembled monolayers (SAM)/Au coated conducting-probe atomic force microscopy (CP-AFM) tip. The dependence of I-V characteristics on the length of molecules was investigated to explain electron transfer process in saturated molecules such as alkanethiol monolayer. The experiment results show that the molecular conductance decreases with increasing of molecule chain length was found in the sandwich structure