Scientific Achievement
Benefiting from the Molecular Foundry’s expertise in the theory of molecular scale transport, Foundry users have designed a new technique to create single-molecule diodes that perform 50 times better than all prior designs.
Significance and Impact
Individual molecules represent the gold standard for electronics miniaturization, which leads to improved performance, greater utility and lower costs.
Research Details
- A diode is a fundamental building block of integrated circuits that acts as an electricity valve.
- A diode must be asymmetric so that electricity flowing in one direction experiences a different environment than electricity flowing in the other.
- Single-molecule diodes have been demonstrated but have suffered from very low current flow and low current flow asymmetry.
- Instead of using an asymmetric molecule, the team improved performance by 50 times by creating asymmetry in the molecule’s environment: an ionic solution and gold metal electrodes of different sizes.
