Atomically defined angstrom-scale all-carbon junctions

Zhibing Tan; Dan Zhang; Han-Rui Tian; Qingqing Wu; Songjun Hou; Jiuchan Pi; Hatef Sadeghi; Zheng Tang; Yang Yang; Junyang Liu; Yuan-Zhi Tan; Zhao-Bin Chen; Jia Shi; Zongyuan Xiao; Colin Lambert; Su-Yuan Xie; Wenjing Hong

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-09793-8

Atomically defined angstrom-scale all-carbon junctions

Nat Commun. 2019 Apr 15;10(1):1748. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09793-8.

Authors

Zhibing Tan¹, Dan Zhang¹, Han-Rui Tian¹, Qingqing Wu², Songjun Hou², Jiuchan Pi¹, Hatef Sadeghi², Zheng Tang¹, Yang Yang¹, Junyang Liu¹, Yuan-Zhi Tan¹, Zhao-Bin Chen¹, Jia Shi¹, Zongyuan Xiao^{3

4}, Colin Lambert⁵, Su-Yuan Xie⁶, Wenjing Hong^{7

8}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, iChEM, NEL, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, 361005, Xiamen, China.
² Department of Physics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YB, UK.
³ State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, iChEM, NEL, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, 361005, Xiamen, China. xiaozy@xmu.edu.cn.
⁴ Graphene Industry and Engineering Research Institute, Xiamen University, 361005, Xiamen, China. xiaozy@xmu.edu.cn.
⁵ Department of Physics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YB, UK. c.lambert@lancaster.ac.uk.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, iChEM, NEL, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, 361005, Xiamen, China. syxie@xmu.edu.cn.
⁷ State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, iChEM, NEL, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, 361005, Xiamen, China. whong@xmu.edu.cn.
⁸ Graphene Industry and Engineering Research Institute, Xiamen University, 361005, Xiamen, China. whong@xmu.edu.cn.

Abstract

Full-carbon electronics at the scale of several angstroms is an expeimental challenge, which could be overcome by exploiting the versatility of carbon allotropes. Here, we investigate charge transport through graphene/single-fullerene/graphene hybrid junctions using a single-molecule manipulation technique. Such sub-nanoscale electronic junctions can be tuned by band gap engineering as exemplified by various pristine fullerenes such as C₆₀, C₇₀, C₇₆ and C₉₀. In addition, we demonstrate further control of charge transport by breaking the conjugation of their π systems which lowers their conductance, and via heteroatom doping of fullerene, which introduces transport resonances and increase their conductance. Supported by our combined density functional theory (DFT) calculations, a promising future of tunable full-carbon electronics based on numerous sub-nanoscale fullerenes in the large family of carbon allotropes is anticipated.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding