Room-temperature Coulomb-blockade-dominated transport in gold nanocluster structures

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the near-room-temperature electrical transport characteristics of structures made from ligand-stabilized metal clusters. The structures show threshold behaviour, nonlinear current-voltage characteristics and radio-frequency-induced plateaux consistent with Coulomb-blockade-dominated transport in disordered arrays of metal dots. Samples having triphenylphosphine and octadecanethiol ligand shells are found to have a 3 orders of magnitude difference in current above threshold. We discuss a possible explanation for this observation.