Interplay of Fermi Level Pinning, Marcus Inverted Transport, and Orbital Gating in Molecular Tunneling Junctions

Hungu Kang, Gyu Don Kong, Seo Eun Byeon, Sena Yang, Jeong Won Kim, Hyo Jae Yoon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This Letter examines the interplay of important tunneling mechanisms-Fermi level pinning, Marcus inverted transport, and orbital gating-in a molecular rectifier. The temperature dependence of the rectifying molecular junction containing 2,2′-bipyridyl terminated n-alkanethiolate was investigated. A bell-shaped trend of activation energy as a function of applied bias evidenced the dominant occurrence of unusual Marcus inverted transport, while retention of rectification at low temperatures implied that the rectification obeyed the resonant tunneling regime. The results allowed reconciling two separately developed transport models, Marcus-Landauer energetics and Fermi level pinning-based rectification. Our work shows that the internal orbital gating can be substituted with the pinning effect, which pushes the transport mechanism into the Marcus inverted regime.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8597-8603
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Volume11
Issue number20
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020 Oct 15

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Materials Science(all)
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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