Abstract

The use of individual molecules as active elements has the potential to advance various fields, such as electronic device miniaturization, energy harvesting, data storage, biological sensing. One most important step towards these technological advancements is to understand and control the charge and heat transfer at single molecule level, in particular across the molecule – electrode junction. This problem can be addressed in terms of a few sub ones, which are fabrication of nanoscale electrodes matching molecule dimensions, robust attachment of molecules to nano-electrodes, and unambiguous characterization of molecule – electrode junctions. In this talk, I will firstly discuss approaches employed in our group towards tackling these problems, in comparison with other methods developed previously in literature. I will then show results on various functional devices being developed based on these approaches. To conclude, I will attempt to discuss briefly about the problems yet to be addressed, along with possible solutions.