McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

CPM Seminar

Engineering Molecules-Surfaces interactions for Molecular Electronics

J.P. Bourgoin[0]

Laboratoire d'Electronique Moléculaire
CEA Saclay

During the last five years, Molecular Electronics has seen very significant advances and raised prospects of mid-term applications[1,2]. In this talk, the focus will be on self-assembly. Self-assembly is generally considered as the way of choice for the fabrication of future molecular electronics circuits. Self-assembling molecules into devices has been used during the last few years with the aim to engineer i)metal-molecule interfaces to improve their transport properties and ii)molecule-surface interactions to localize the self-assembly of the molecules-including carbon nanotubes.

After a presentation of different means we developed to measure the transport properties of a single molecule, the relationship between the molecular structure and the transport properties will be discussed. It will be shown that the metal - molecule coupling plays a key role[3,4]. This will be illustrated based on combined Photoelectron Spectroscopy-STM experiments where similar conjugated molecules with different endgroups have been systematically compared[5].

In a second part, it will be shown how carbon nanotubes(NTs) can be self-assembled at predefined location of a substrate using for example a localized functionalization of the substrate by a self-assembled monolayer[6]. The FET devices prepared in that way are functional with state-of-the-art performances[7]. The role played by the environment (including that of the self-assembled monolayer directing the deposition of the NTs and that of molecules adsorbed on the NTs) on the devices characteristics will be discussed. Finally, the improvements of the self-assembling technique using the recognition properties of biomolecules will be presented.

[0] Together with F. Armand, S. Auvray, J. Borghetti, P. Chenevier, V. Derycke, S. Gazeau, A. Filoramo, L. Goux-Capes, M. Goffman, R. Lefevre, M. Lambert, S. Palacin, L. Patrone
[1] A. Nitzan and M. Ratner, Science 300 (2003)1384
[2] J.R. Heath and M.A. Ratner, Physics Today (2003)43 [3] C Kergueris, J P Bourgoin, S Palacin, D. Esteve, C. Urbina, M. Magoga, C. Joachim Phys. Rev. B 59 (1999) 12505
[4] J.P. Bourgoin in "Interacting Electrons in Nanostructures", H. Schoeller, R. Haug eds.Lectures Notes in Physics, Springer, Berlin 2001
[5] L. Patrone, F. Armand, S. Palacin, J. Charlier, J. Lagoute, T. Zambelli, S. Gauthier, H. Tang and J.P. Bourgoin, Physical Review Letters (2003), 91(9) 96802.
[6] K.H. Choi, J.P. Bourgoin, S. Auvray, D. Esteve, G. S. Duesberg, S. Roth and M. Burghard, Surf. Sci. 462,195 (2000).
[7] E. Valentin, S. Auvray, J. Goethals, J. Lewenstein, L. Capes, A. Filoramo, A. Ribayrol, R. Tsui, J.P. Bourgoin, J.N. Patillon, Microelectronic engineering 61-62, 491 (2002).

Thursday, May 13th 2004, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103)