Electronic and mechanical characteristics of stacked dimer molecular junctions

Abstract

Break-junction measurements are typically aimed at characterizing electronic properties of single molecules bound between two metal electrodes. Although these measurements have provided structure–function relationships for such devices, there is little work that studies the impact of molecule-molecule interactions on junction characteristics. Here, we use a scanning tunneling microscope based break-junction technique to study pi-stacked dimer junctions formed with two amine-terminated conjugated molecules. We show that the conductance, force and flicker noise of such dimers differ dramatically when compared with the corresponding monomer junctions and discuss the implications of these results on intra- and inter-molecular charge transport.