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Conductance switching at the nanoscale of diarylethene derivatives self-assembled monolayers on La$_{0.7}$Sr$_{0.3}$MnO$_3$

We report on the phosphonic acid route for the grafting of functional molecules, optical switch (dithienylethene diphosphonic acid, DDA), on La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO). Compact self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of DDA are formed on LSMO as studied by topographic atomic force microscopy (AFM), ellipsometry, water contact angle and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS). The conducting AFM measurements show that the electrical conductance of LSMO/DDA is about 3 decades below that of the bare LSMO substrate. Moreover, the presence of the DDA SAM suppresses the known conductance switching of the LSMO substrate that is induced by mechanical and/or bias constraints during C-AFM measurements. A partial light-induced conductance switching between the open and closed forms of the DDA is observed for the LSMO/DDA/C-AFM tip molecular junctions (closed/open conductance ratio of about 8). We show that, in the case of long-time exposition to UV light, this feature can be masked by a non-reversible decrease (a factor of about 15) of the conductance of the LSMO electrode.