TY - JOUR
T1 - Local ionic and electron heating in single-molecule junctions
AU - Huang, Zhifeng
AU - Chen, Fang
AU - D'Agosta, Roberto
AU - Bennett, Peter
AU - Di Ventra, Massimiliano
AU - Tao, Nongjian
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the US National Science Foundation (ECS0304682, Z.F.H.), the US Department of Energy (DE-FG03-01ER45943, F.C. and Z.F.H.) and (DE-FG02-05ER46204, R.D.) for financial support. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to N.J.T. and M.D.V. Supplementary information accompanies this paper on www.nature.com/naturenanotechnology.
PY - 2007/11
Y1 - 2007/11
N2 - A basic aim in molecular electronics is to understand transport through a single molecule connected to two electrodes. Substantial progress towards this goal has been made over the past decade as a result of advances in both experimental techniques and theoretical methods. Nonetheless, a fundamental and technologically important issue, current-induced local heating of molecules, has received much less attention. Here, we report on a combined experimental and theoretical study of local heating in single molecules (6-, 8- and 10-alkanedithiol) covalently attached to two gold electrodes as a function of applied bias and molecular length. We find that the effective local temperature of the molecular junction first increases with applied bias, and then decreases after reaching a maximum. At fixed bias, the effective temperature decreases with increasing molecular length. These experimental findings are in agreement with hydrodynamic predictions, which include both electron-phonon and electron-electron interactions.
AB - A basic aim in molecular electronics is to understand transport through a single molecule connected to two electrodes. Substantial progress towards this goal has been made over the past decade as a result of advances in both experimental techniques and theoretical methods. Nonetheless, a fundamental and technologically important issue, current-induced local heating of molecules, has received much less attention. Here, we report on a combined experimental and theoretical study of local heating in single molecules (6-, 8- and 10-alkanedithiol) covalently attached to two gold electrodes as a function of applied bias and molecular length. We find that the effective local temperature of the molecular junction first increases with applied bias, and then decreases after reaching a maximum. At fixed bias, the effective temperature decreases with increasing molecular length. These experimental findings are in agreement with hydrodynamic predictions, which include both electron-phonon and electron-electron interactions.
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U2 - 10.1038/nnano.2007.345
DO - 10.1038/nnano.2007.345
M3 - Article
C2 - 18654408
AN - SCOPUS:35948996612
SN - 1748-3387
VL - 2
SP - 698
EP - 703
JO - Nature nanotechnology
JF - Nature nanotechnology
IS - 11
ER -