ABSTRACT
The ability to control structural and electronic properties at a nanometer scale has during the last decade opened up a new field of research, nanotechnology. Carbon-based nanostructured materials have had an important role in this development, primarily because of carbon nanotubes [1,2], but also other types of molecular wires have been widely studied [3-6]. One common problem to all such molecular-based nanoelectronics is how to make the contact to the molecules. The contact resistance is determined by the interactions between the molecules and the contact surface. In order to control these interactions it is necessary to have a detailed understanding of the interfacial interactions and how these interactions relate to the contact resistance. This type of study is also relevant in the context of other soft material electronics, such as polymer/molecular based light-emitting diodes [7] and molecular field effect transistors [8].
