Acta Physico-Chimica Sinica ›› 2019, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (8): 829-839.doi: 10.3866/PKU.WHXB201811027

• REVIEW • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Recent Progress of Break Junction Technique in Single-Molecule Reaction Chemistry

Peikai YU,Anni FENG,Shiqiang ZHAO,Junying WEI,Yang YANG*(),Jia SHI,Wenjing HONG*()   

  • Received:2018-11-16 Accepted:2018-12-20 Published:2018-12-25
  • Contact: Yang YANG,Wenjing HONG E-mail:yangyang@xmu.edu.cn;whong@xmu.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    the National Key R & D Program of China(2017YFA0204902);the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, China(2016J05162)

Abstract:

Molecular electronics has been the subject of increasing interest since 1974. Although it describes the utilization of single molecules as active components of electrical devices, molecular electronics remains a fundamental subject to date. Considering that the length of a single molecule is typically several nanometers, the electrical characterization of a probe molecule is a significant experimental challenge. A metal/molecule/metal junction can bridge the gap between nanometer-sized molecules and the macroscopic measuring circuit and is, thus, generally considered as the most common prototype in molecular electronics. For the fabrication and characterization of single-molecule junctions, break junction methods, which include the mechanically controllable break junction (MCBJ) technique and the scanning tunneling microscopy-break junction (STM-BJ) technique, were proposed at the turn of the century and have been developed rapidly in recent years. These methods are widely employed in the experimental study of charge transport through single-molecule junctions and provide a platform to investigate the physical and chemical processes at the single-molecule level. In this review, we mainly focus on MCBJ and STM-BJ techniques applicable for single-molecule conductance measurement and highlight the progress of these techniques in the context of identification and modulation of chemical reactions and evaluation of their reaction kinetics at the single-molecule level. We begin by presenting the operation principles of MCBJ and STM-BJ and stating their brief comparison. Subsequently, we summarize the recent advances in modulating single-molecule chemical reactions. In this regard, we introduce several examples that involve changing the environmental solution, applying an external electrical field, and resorting to electrochemical gating. Next, we overview the application of the break junction techniques in the investigation of reaction kinetics at the single-molecule level. In this section, we also present a brief introduction to studies on single-molecule reaction kinetics using graphene-based nanogaps, wherein conventional metallic electrodes were replaced by graphene electrodes. Furthermore, we discuss the combination of break junction techniques and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for detecting single-molecule reactions occurring at nanometer-scale separation. We discuss the historical development of this combined method and present the latest advancement explaining the origin of the low conductance of 1, 4-benzenedithiol, which is a topic of significant concern in single-molecule electronics. Finally, we discuss some future issues in molecular electronics, including the expansion from simple molecules to complex molecular systems and the introduction of multi-physical fields into single-molecule junctions. Moreover, we provide a list of critical characterization tools in molecular electronics and discuss their potential applications.

Key words: Molecular electronics, Single molecule, Charge transport, Mechanically controllable break junction, STM break junction