Attoampere Nanoelectrochemistry

Abstract

Electrochemical microscopy techniques have extended the understanding of surface chemistry to the micrometer and even sub-micrometer level. However, fundamental questions related to charge transport at the solid-electrolyte interface, such as catalytic reactions or operation of individual ion channels, require improved spatial resolutions down to the nanoscale. A prerequisite for single-molecule electrochemical sensitivity is the reliable detection of a few electrons per second, that is, currents in the atto-Ampere (10^-18 A) range, 1000 times below today's electrochemical microscopes. This work reports local cyclic voltammetry (CV) measurements at the solid-liquid interface on ferrocene self-assembled monolayer (SAM) with sub-atto-Ampere sensitivity and simultaneous spatial resolution < 80 nm. Such sensitivity is obtained through measurements of the charging of the local faradaic interface capacitance at GHz frequencies. Nanometer-scale details of different molecular organizations with a 19% packing density difference are resolved, with an extremely small dispersion of the molecular electrical properties. This is predicted previously based on weak electrostatic interactions between neighboring redox molecules in a SAM configuration. These results open new perspectives for nano-electrochemistry like the study of quantum mechanical resonance in complex molecules and a wide range of applications from electrochemical catalysis to biophysics.

Keywords: attoampere; nano-electrochemistry; radiofrequency; scanning tunneling microscopy.