Influence of metal-molecule contacts on decay coefficients and specific contact resistances in molecular junctions

The effect of metal-molecule contacts in molecular junctions is studied based on the analysis of a statistically significant number of devices and a proposed multibarrier tunneling (MBT) model, where a metal-molecule-metal junction is divided into three individual barriers: a molecular-chain body and metal-molecule contacts on either side of molecule. Using the MBT model with the statistical analysis, we could derive and distinguish decay coefficients for contact barriers (β1, β2), contact-dependent and contact-independent decay coefficients (β0 vs βbody), and specific contact resistances in terms of different molecular length and different natures of metal-molecule contacts.