Prof. Dr. Peer Kirsch, TU Darmstadt: Self-Assembled Monolayers for Molecular Electronics and Spintronics

Functionalized self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) can be used as active components in electronic and spintronic devices. SAMs composed of dipolar, conformationally flexible phosphonic acids enable elec-trically switchable tunnel junctions with memristive characteristics. The performance of such organic devices is comparable to that of their state-of-the-art inorganic counterparts. The big advantage of organic systems is their intrinsic functional versatility: a rather complex property profile can be easily designed into the individual component molecules, whereas deposition and device fabricating pro-cesses remain always the same. A potential challenge of many SAM systems - thermal stability - was resolved by using thermally and chemically robust phosphonic acids as anchoring groups which are compatible with oxide and nitride substrate materials common in electronics industry.