Emerging Nanoelectronic Devices

11Molecular Transistors

Mark A. Reed¹, Hyunwook Song², and Takhee Lee³

¹Departments of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics, Yale University, USA

²Department of Applied Physics, Kyung Hee University, Korea

³Department of Physics, Seoul National University, Korea

11.1 Introduction

Since Aviram and Ratner initially proposed a molecular rectifier in 1974 to predict the feasibility of constructing a functional molecular device using single molecules as the active elements [1], the field of molecular electronics has attracted significant interest over the past few decades [2–9]. The concept of making a functional device based on the properties inherent in a single molecule offers fascinating possibilities due to the potentially diverse electronic functions of the component molecules that can be tailored by chemical design and synthesis. Within the past few years, a wide range of characteristic functions illustrated by single molecules has been reported, including diodes [10–12], transistors [13–16], switches [17–21], and memory [21–23]. Single molecules provide ideal systems to investigate charge transport on the molecular scale, which is a subject of intense current interest for both practical applications and achieving a fundamental understanding of novel physical phenomena that take place at this length scale. This chapter focuses primarily on experimental aspects of devices that consist of one or very few molecules contacted between external electrodes. In particular, ...