Transition voltages respond to synthetic reorientation of embedded dipoles in self-assembled monolayers

What is it about?

We show that, without altering the frontier orbital energies or the lengths of molecules, we can control the magnitude of transition voltages in tunneling junctions comprising self-assembled monolayers. Transition voltages are related to the internal energy levels in the junction, which cannot be observed explicitly.

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Why is it important?

It is further evidence that the tunneling currents carried by junctions comprising self-assembled monolayers can be controlled by exploiting the collective properties of molecules that arise in a monolayer and it provides further insight into the nature of transition voltages. Our paper discusses the idea of using this type of control to synthetically install "fingerprints" in molecules that cannot be characterized using length-dependence, which is important because once a junction is assembled the only observable to test whether or not the molecules are really mitigating tunneling is current as a function of applied bias.