Electrical conductance of molecular junctions by a robust statistical analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust statistical method for accurately determining the electrical conductance of single molecules in molecular junctions from experimental data, eliminating the need for data selection.

Contribution

The authors develop a physics-based statistical approach to extract molecular conductance from conductance measurements, improving objectivity and robustness over previous methods.

Findings

Method successfully applied to octanedithiol junctions

Conductance values obtained without data selection

Enhanced accuracy and objectivity in conductance measurement

Abstract

We propose an objective and robust method to extract the electrical conductance of single molecules connected to metal electrodes from a set of measured conductance data. Our method roots in the physics of tunneling and is tested on octanedithiol using mechanically controllable break junctions. The single molecule conductance values can be deduced without the need for data selection.