The fabrication methods of Metal-molecule-metal junction electrode current state-of-art

Abstract

Fabrication techniques for Metal-molecule-metal junction electrode suitable to study electron tunneling through metal junctions are reviewed. The applications of current strategies such as mechanical breakjunction, electromigration, shadow mask lithography, focused ion beam deposition, chemical and electrochemical plating, electron-beam lithography, in fabricating vacant junction electrode are briefly described. For biomolecules sensing applications, the size of the junction electrode must be small enough to allow the biomolecule inserted into the junction space to connect both leads to keep the molecules in a relaxed and undistorted state. A significant advantage of using Metal-molecule-metal junction devices is that the junction can be characterized with and without the molecule in place using simple instruments. Any electrical artifacts introduced by the electrode fabrication process can be more easily deconvoluted from the intrinsic properties of the molecule