Integration and scaling of molecular and solid-state materials

The integration of molecular and solid-state materials for use in molecular electronic circuits is presented. A series of redox-addressable, bistable molecules in the form of two-station [2]rotaxanes are presented and their incorporation into a solid-state device architecture is discussed, with an emphasis on contacting the molecules with metal evaporation. The effect of this top metal contact on both the spectroscopic characteristics and the resulting device performance is explored. In addition, the top metal is shown to be useful in protecting the molecular films during subsequent device processing, allowing for the incorporation of the molecules in increasingly complex device architectures. The performance of the molecular switches in isolated molecular switch tunnel junction devices and crossbar architectures is presented. Finally, the scaling down of individual junction size, with a concurrent increase in bit density to 1011 bits/cm2 is explored.