Pulling Platinum Atomic Chains by Carbon Monoxide Molecules

TL;DR

This study investigates how carbon monoxide molecules interact with platinum nanojunctions, revealing molecular configurations that influence chain formation and demonstrating the effectiveness of combined histograms and correlation analysis.

Contribution

It provides a detailed microscopic picture of Pt-CO-Pt junction formation, incorporating experimental analysis and theoretical agreement, and introduces a novel analytical approach.

Findings

CO molecules infiltrate before platinum chain formation

Molecules can be perpendicular or parallel in the chain

Analysis aligns with theoretical predictions

Abstract

The interaction of carbon monoxide molecules with atomic-scale platinum nanojunctions is investigated by low temperature mechanically controllable break junction experiments. Combining plateaus' length analysis, two dimensional conductance-displacement histograms and conditional correlation analysis a comprehensive microscopic picture is proposed about the formation and evolution of Pt-CO-Pt single-molecule configurations. Our analysis implies that before pure Pt monoatomic chains would be formed a CO molecule infiltrates the junction, first in a configuration being perpendicular to the contact axis. This molecular junction is strong enough to pull a monoatomic platinum chain with the molecule being incorporated in the chain. Along the chain formation the molecule can either stay in the perpendicular configuration, or rotate to a parallel configuration. The evolution of the single-molecule configurations along the junction displacement shows quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions, justifying the interpretation in terms of perpendicular and parallel molecular alignment. Our analysis demonstrates that the combination of two dimensional conductance-displacement histograms with conditional correlation analysis is a useful tool to separately analyze fundamentally different types of junction trajectories in single molecule break junction experiments.