Conductance Titration of Single-Peptide Molecules

We have measured the conductance of single peptides covalently bonded to two Au electrodes via S-Au bonds by repeatedly forming a large number of molecular junctions. The conductance decreases exponentially with the peptide length, with a decay constant of β = 0.9 ± 0.1 Å-1, suggesting that tunneling is the mechanism of electron transport in the peptides. The conductance of the peptides is sensitive to the solution pH, due to the protonation/deprotonation of the amine and carboxyl groups of the peptides, which provides titration measurements based on single-molecule conductance.