Since more than 20 years, single molecule junctions are a particular focus of our research activity. While initial concepts were geared towards demonstrating the single-molecule nature of the junction by structure property correlations, recent studies deal with functional junctions responding to external triggers. Currently we explore the potential of electric and magnetic fields to tune the transport characteristic of the molecular junction.

An example is the Fe(II) terpyridine complex which senses the applied E-field as sketched on the left side of the figure. The right side is the graphical abstract of a recent study identifying different transport channels in single porphyrin junctions by combining controlled structural variation with cluster analysis.