Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Article number | 1748 |
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 15/04/2019 |
<mark>Journal</mark> | Nature Communications |
Issue number | 1 |
Volume | 10 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Pages (from-to) | 1748 |
Publication Status | Published |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
Full-carbon electronics at the scale of several angstroms is an expeimental challenge, which could be overcome by exploiting the versatility of carbon allotropes. Here, we investigate charge transport through graphene/single-fullerene/graphene hybrid junctions using a single-molecule manipulation technique. Such sub-nanoscale electronic junctions can be tuned by band gap engineering as exemplified by various pristine fullerenes such as C 60, C 70, C 76 and C 90. In addition, we demonstrate further control of charge transport by breaking the conjugation of their π systems which lowers their conductance, and via heteroatom doping of fullerene, which introduces transport resonances and increase their conductance. Supported by our combined density functional theory (DFT) calculations, a promising future of tunable full-carbon electronics based on numerous sub-nanoscale fullerenes in the large family of carbon allotropes is anticipated.