Unidirectional Real-Time Photoswitching of Diarylethene Molecular Monolayer Junctions with Multilayer Graphene Electrodes

Jeongmin Koo; Yeonsik Jang; León Martin; Dongku Kim; Hyunhak Jeong; Keehoon Kang; Woocheol Lee; Junwoo Kim; Wang-Taek Hwang; Dong Xiang; Elke Scheer; Mikhail Kabdulov; Thomas Huhn; Fabian Pauly; Takhee Lee

doi:10.1021/acsami.8b19372

Unidirectional Real-Time Photoswitching of Diarylethene Molecular Monolayer Junctions with Multilayer Graphene Electrodes

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Mar 27;11(12):11645-11653. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b19372. Epub 2019 Mar 14.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Institute of Applied Physics , Seoul National University , Seoul 08826 , Korea.
² Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University , Onna-son, Okinawa 904-0495 , Japan.
³ Tianjin Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Sensor and Sensing Network Technology, College of Electronic Information and Optical Engineering , Nankai University , 300071 Tianjin , China.

PMID: 30821955
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b19372

Abstract

We fabricate and characterize vertical molecular junctions consisting of self-assembled monolayers of diarylethene (DAE) contacted by a multilayer graphene (MLG) electrode on the top and gold on the bottom. The DAE molecular junctions show two stable electrical states, a closed state (high conductance) or an open state (low conductance), which are created upon illumination with UV or visible light, respectively. For the Au-DAE-MLG junction structure, we observe that the current levels between the two conductance states are separated by 2 orders of magnitude. However, in a real-time measurement, we observe only unidirectional switching behavior from the open to the closed state.

Keywords: diarylethene; graphene electrode; molecular electronics; photoswitching; self-assembled monolayer.