The electronic transport in single molecules, covalently linked to a metallic substrate and a
SNOM Tipp, will be studied by inelastic scattering methods.

Dr. J. Reichert, Technische Universität München [Homepage]

Electronic transport measurements on single molecules which are immobilized by
self-assembling techniques between two metallic electrodes proved the ability of organic
molecules to act as functional parts in nano-scale-devices. Recent developments
and advances in atomic-scale imaging and manipulation techniques enables
access to a new field of single molecule experiments. Especially scanning near field
optical microcopy with its ability to apply an optical field to a molecular system in a
controlled manner enlarges the range of experimentally available properties in metalanchored
molecular junctions. A novel method to contact single molecules with a
SNOM-tip has been developed which is targeted to access the vibrational spectrum of
a metal-molecule-metal junction at specific electron transfer rates. First testexperiments
encourage us to propose a systematic comparative study on electronphonon
coupling using three exemplary molecular systems. Such an analysis would
lead to physical insights that as far as known have not been studied yet.
The SNOM tip can also serve as a local white-light source and counter electrode at
the same time. This flexibility allows us to propose a study of the optoelectronic
properties of single metallo-protein complexes photosystem I (PS I) covalently linked
to two gold electrodes.