Electroluminescence from a polythiophene molecular wire suspended in a plasmonic scanning tunneling microscope junction

Gaël Reecht (1) , Fabrice Scheurer (1) , Virginie Speisser (1) , Yannick J. Dappe (2) , Fabrice Mathevet (3) , Guillaume Schull (1)

1 IPCMS - Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg
2 GMT - Groupe Modélisation et Théorie
3 LCP - Chimie des polymères

The electroluminescence of a polythiophene wire suspended between two metallic electrodes is probed using a scanning tunneling microscope. Under positive sample voltage, the spectral and voltage dependencies of the emitted light are consistent with the fluorescence of the wire junction mediated by localized plasmons. This emission is strongly attenuated for the opposite polarity. Both emission mechanism and polarity dependence are similar to what occurs in organic light emitting diodes (OLED) but at the level of a single molecular wire.

Domains: Physics [physics]

Gaël Reecht, Fabrice Scheurer, Virginie Speisser, Yannick J. Dappe, Fabrice Mathevet, et al.. Electroluminescence from a polythiophene molecular wire suspended in a plasmonic scanning tunneling microscope junction. Physical Review Letters, 2014, 112 (4), pp.47403. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.047403⟩. ⟨cea-01376419⟩