Chemical noise produced by equilibrium adsorption/desorption of surface pyridine at Au-Ag-Au bimetallic atom-scale junctions studied by fluctuation spectroscopy.

The chemical noise contained in conductance fluctuations resulting from adsorption and desorption of pyridine at Au-Ag-Au bimetallic atom-scale junctions (ASJs) exhibiting ballistic electron transport is studied using fluctuation spectroscopy. ASJs are fabricated by electrochemical Ag deposition in a Au nanogap to produce a high-conductance Ag quantum wire, followed by electromigration-induced thinning in pyridine solution to create stable ASJs. The conductance behavior of the resulting ASJs is analyzed by sequential autocorrelation and Fourier transform of the current-time data to yield the power spectral density (PSD). In these experiments the PSDs from Ag ASJs in pyridine exhibit two main frequency regions: 1/f noise originating from resistance fluctuations of the junction itself at low frequencies, and a Lorentzian noise component arising from molecular adsorption/desorption fluctuations at higher frequencies. The characteristic cutoff frequency of the Lorentzian noise component determines the relaxation time of molecular fluctuations, which, in turn, is sensitive to the kinetics of the adsorption/desorption process. The kinetics are found to depend on concentration and on the adsorption binding energy. The junction size (<5G0), on the other hand, does not affect the kinetics, as the cutoff frequency remains unchanged. Concentration-dependent adsorption free energies are interpreted as arising from a distribution of binding energies, N(E(b)), on the Ag ASJ. Other observations, such as long lifetime ASJs and two-level fluctuations in conductance, provide additional evidence for the integral role of the adsorbate in determining ASJ reorganization dynamics.