Prof. Nicolás Agraït de la Puente

Nicolás Agraït has been full professor in Physics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) since 2006 and associated senior researcher of IMDEA since 2008. He has developed state-of-the-art scanning probe techniques for studying transport in the nanoscale and performed pioneering studies of transport in nanocontacts, atomic contacts, freely-suspended atomic wires and single-molecule junctions, including mechanical properties, electron-phonon interaction, and thermopower, using scanning probe techniques. He has over 90 refereed publications with over 5800 citations; his h-index is 29 (ISI WoS).

We study the properties of single-molecule junctions formed using scanning tunneling microscopes that are designed and developed in house. We focus on junctions with molecules chemically bound to two metallic electrodes.

1. Electrical properties of organic molecule families: oligo(phenyl ethynylene)s, oligoynes, phthalocyanines, porphyrins... (JACS 2013, JACS 2014, JACS 2015...)
2. Thermopower of single-molecule junctions: we explore to ability to a single molecule of different compounds to generate an electrical potential when they are under a thermal gradient (Nano Lett. 2013, Nature Mater. 2016, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2016).
3. Key factors involved in the formation and stability of molecular junctions (J. Chem. Phys. C 2013, J. Am. Soc. 2013, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2015...).
4. Fullerene-based molecular junctions (Nano Lett. 2011, JOC 2014).
5. Graphene as electrode for molecular electronics.
6. Molecular junctions under electrochemical control.

• “Study of electron-phonon interactions in a single molecule covalently connected to two electrodes” Hihath J. et col. Nano Lett. 2008, 8, 1673- 1678
• “Quantum properties of atomic-sized conductors” N. Agrait et col. Phys. Reps. 377, 81-380 (2003)
• “Formation and manipulation of a metallic wire of single gold atoms”A.I. Yanson et col. Nature 395, 783-785 (1998)