2003 年 24 巻 2 号 p. 83-89
Nanoscale patterning, electrical conduction measurements and observation of nanomotion of organic self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on Au surface were studied for the purpose of realizing single molecular devices. We successfully obtained well-controlled nanostructure in the SAMs by simple phase-separation techniques. The electrical conduction through SAMs were evaluated by SPM and found that electrical currents through the monolayers exponentially decreased with the increase in the molecular length, showing the current mechanism is determined by a direct tunneling. Finally, we observed molecular motion induced by the polarity change of electric fields by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), when small amounts of mobile asymmetrical disulfides with terphenyl moiety were embedded into pre-assembled dodecanethiol SAMs. We believe that such a nanomotion is one of the demonstrations for the single molecular devices.