Silicon ring strain creates high-conductance pathways in single-molecule circuits

Here we demonstrate for the first time that strained silanes couple directly to gold electrodes in break-junction conductance measurements. We find that strained silicon molecular wires terminated by alkyl sulfide aurophiles behave effectively as single-molecule parallel circuits with competing sulfur-to-sulfur (low G) and sulfur-to-silacycle (high G) pathways. We can switch off the high conducting sulfur-to-silacycle pathway by altering the environment of the electrode surface to disable the Au–silacycle coupling. Additionally, we can switch between conductive pathways in a single molecular junction by modulating the tip–substrate electrode distance. This study provides a new molecular design to control electronics in silicon-based single molecule wires.