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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 8597-8603 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 20 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2020 Oct 15 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Materials Science(all)
- Physical and Theoretical Chemistry