Suspicion Confirmed Flat Molecules Better for Conducting Electricity: "The field of nanotechnology involves designing machines and devices on a nanoscale. One of the main challenges for scientists had been in figuring out how to test the conductance of electronic components that consist of a single molecule. Scientists have come up with a number of techniques, but the large fluctuations in the results produced by these techniques have made it difficult to predict how individual molecules will behave as electronic devices.

In her previous research, Venkataraman -- together with her colleagues Jennifer Klare, Colin Nuckolls, Mark Hybertsen and Michael Steigerwald from Columbia’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center -- came up with a refinement of one of the prevailing methods for measuring conductance in a molecule. She used a novel amine-gold link to attach single molecules to the gold electrodes (published in Nano Letters in March 2006). "