Improving transition voltage spectroscopy of molecular junctions

Transition voltage spectroscopy (TVS) is a promising spectroscopic tool for molecular junctions. The principles in TVS is to find the minimum on a Fowler-Nordheim plot where ln(I/V2) is plotted against 1/V and relate the voltage at the minimum Vmin to the closest molecular level. Importantly, Vmin is approximately half the voltage required to see a peak in the dI/dV curve.

Information about the molecular level position can thus be obtained at relatively low voltages. In this work we show that the molecular level position can be determined at even lower voltages, Vmin(α), by finding the minimum of ln(I/Vα) with α