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Updated: Jul 18, 2026

All-electronic Nanosecond-resolved Scanning Tunneling Microscopy: Facilitating the Investigation of Single Dopant Charge Dynamics
Published on: January 19, 2018
Electronic switching of single silicon atoms by molecular field effects
Krishnan R Harikumar1, John C Polanyi, Peter A Sloan
1Department of Chemistry and Institute of Optical Sciences, University of Toronto, 80 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3H6 Canada.
Abstract:
We have observed on-off switching of scanning tunneling microscope current flow to silicon adatoms of the Si(111)-(7 x 7) surface that are enclosed within a bistable dimeric corral of self-assembled chlorododecane molecules. These thermally activated oscillations amounted to an order of magnitude change in the current. Theory showed that small changes in molecular configuration could cause alterations in the corralled adatom's electronic energy by as much as 1 eV due to local field effects, accounting for the observed current switching.
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