A New Route to Nondestructive Top-Contacts for Molecular Electronics on Si: Pb Evaporated on Organic Monolayers

Thermally evaporated Pb preserves the electronic properties of an organic monolayer (ML) on Si and surface passivation of the Si surface itself. The obtained current–voltage characteristics of Pb/ML/Si junctions agree with results obtained with the well-established Hg contact and preserve both the molecule-induced dipole effect on, and length-attenuation of, the current. We rationalize our findings by the lack of interaction between the Pb and the Si substrate. This method is fast, scalable, and compatible with standard semiconductor processing, results in close to 100% yield, and can help the development of large-scale utilization of silicon-organic hybrid electronics. Our experimental data show a dependence of the transport across the molecules on the substrate orientation, expressed in the smaller distance decay parameter with Si(100) than that with Si(111).