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Updated: May 19, 2026

Molecular Spring Constant Analysis by Biomembrane Force Probe Spectroscopy
Published on: November 20, 2021
Force-conductance correlation in individual molecular junctions
C Nef1, P L T M Frederix, J Brunner
1Department of Physics, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Conducting atomic force microscopy is an attractive approach enabling the correlation of mechanical and electrical properties in individual molecular junctions. Here we report on measurements of gold-gold and gold-octanedithiol-gold junctions. We introduce two-dimensional histograms in the form of scatter plots to better analyze the correlation between force and conductance. In this representation, the junction-forming octanedithiol compounds lead to a very clear step in the force-conductance data, which is not observed for control monothiol compounds. The conductance found for octanedithiols is in agreement with the idea that junction conductance is dominated by a single molecule.
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