Polarizabilities of Adsorbed and Assembled Molecules: Measuring the Conductance through Buried Contacts

We have measured the polarizabilities of four families of molecules adsorbed to Au{111} surfaces, with structures ranging from fully saturated to fully conjugated, including single-molecule switches. Measured polarizabilities increase with increasing length and conjugation in the adsorbed molecules and are consistent with theoretical calculations. For single-molecule switches, the polarizability reflects the difference in substrate-molecule electronic coupling in the ON and OFF conductance states. Calculations suggest that the switch between the two conductance states is correlated with an oxidation state change in a nitro functional group in the switch molecules

Model study of adsorbed metallic quantum dots: Na on Cu(111)

We model electronic properties of the second monolayer Na adatom islands (quantum dots) on the Cu(111) surface covered homogeneously by the first Na monolayer. An axially-symmetric three-dimensional jellium model, taking into account the effects due to the first Na monolayer and the Cu substrate, has been developed. The electronic structure is solved within the local-density approximation of the density-functional theory using a real-space multigrid method. The model enables the study of systems consisting of thousands of Na-atoms. The results for the local density of states are compared with differential conductance ($dI/dV$) spectra and constant current topographs from Scanning Tunneling Microscopy.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. For better quality figures, download http://www.fyslab.hut.fi/~tto/cylart1.pd

Exchange Reactions between Alkanethiolates and Alkaneselenols on Au{111}

When alkanethiolate self-assembled monolayers on Au{111} are exchanged with alkaneselenols from solution, replacement of thiolates by selenols is rapid and complete, and is well described by perimeter-dependent island growth kinetics. The monolayer structures change as selenolate coverage increases, from being epitaxial and consistent with the initial thiolate structure to being characteristic of selenolate monolayer structures. At room temperature and at positive sample bias in scanning tunneling microscopy, the selenolate-gold attachment is labile, and molecules exchange positions with neighboring thiolates. The scanning tunneling microscope probe can be used to induce these place-exchange reactions