Impact of Casimir Force in Molecular Electronic Switching Junctions

Despite significant progress In synthesizing several new molecules and many promising single device demonstrations, wide range acceptance of molecular electronics as an alternative to CMOS technology has been stalled not only by controversial theories of a molecular device's operation, for example the switching mechanism, but also by our inability to reproducibly fabricate large arrays of devices. In this paper, we investigate the role of Casimir force as one of the potential source of a wide range of discrepancies in the reported electrical characteristics and high rate of device shorting in molecular electronic switching junctions fabricated by sandwiching a molecular monolayer between a pair of planar metal electrodes.