Reactivity in the Single Molecule Junction

Rachel Starr

In the last two decades, significant strides have been made towards utilizing the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) as a reaction chemistry tool, in addition to its primary use as an imaging instrument. Built off the STM, the STM-break junction (STM-BJ) technique was developed specifically for the reliable and reproducible measurement of properties of a single molecule suspended between two electrodes. These advances are crucial to the fields of molecular electronics and single-molecule reactivity, the latter also relating back to traditional bulk chemistry. By intelligently designing experiments and systems to probe with the STM and STM-BJ, we can begin to understand chemical processes on a deeper level than ever before. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the recent work using the STM and STM-BJ to effect chemical transformations which involve the making and breaking of bonds. We...