Single-molecule transistors: tools for physics and physical chemistry

Doug Natelson
Department of Physics, Rice University

The recent development of single-molecule transistors (SMTs), three-terminal devices with an active channel comprising a single small molecule, has enabled new studies of many-body physics and physical chemistry.  I will describe briefly the fabrication and characterization of such systems, emphasizing control experiments and statistics.  Then I will discuss three experimental observations: gate-modulated inelastic electron tunneling through a single molecule; Kondo conduction through transition metal complexes and the anomalous dependence of the Kondo temperature on gate voltage; and the use of SMTs to examine the mechanism of hysteretic conduction in single- molecule junctions.