Maskless Arbitrary Writing of Molecular Tunnel Junctions

Seo Eun Byeon, Miso Kim, Hyo Jae Yoon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Since fabricating geometrically well-defined, noninvasive, and compliant electrical contacts over molecular monolayers is difficult, creating molecular-scale electronic devices that function in high yield with good reproducibility is challenging. Moreover, none of the previously reported methods to form organic-electrode contacts at the nanometer and micrometer scales have resulted in directly addressable contacts in an untethered form under ambient conditions without the use of cumbersome equipment and nanolithography. Here we show that in situ encapsulation of a liquid metal (eutectic Ga-In alloy) microelectrode, which is used for junction formation, with a convenient photocurable polymeric scaffold enables untethering of the electrode and direct writing of arbitrary arrays of high-yielding molecular junctions under ambient conditions in a maskless fashion. The formed junctions function in quantitative yields and can afford tunneling currents with high reproducibility; they also function at low temperatures and under bent. The results reported here promise a massively parallel printing technology to construct integrated circuits based on molecular junctions with soft top contacts.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)40556-40563
Number of pages8
JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume9
Issue number46
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017 Nov 22

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017M3A7B8064518) and Korea University Future Research Grant.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Chemical Society.

Keywords

  • charge transport
  • maskless arbitrary writing
  • tunnel junction patterning
  • tunneling
  • untethered junction

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Materials Science(all)

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