Electron Transfer in a Hg-SAM//SAM-Hg Junction Mediated by Redox Centers

✍ Scribed by Elizabeth Tran; Maria A. Rampi; George M. Whitesides

• Book ID: 101567355
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 154 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0044-8249
• DOI: 10.1002/anie.200453945

✦ Synopsis

Studies of electron transport through molecules using metalmolecule-metal junctions [1][2][3] or scanning probe devices [2,[4][5][6] suggest principles that may be useful in designing systems for organic/organometallic electronics. Molecules are, in general, poor conductors of electrons, and "conduct" by tunneling. For some molecules, however, applying a potential across the electrodes of a metal-molecule-metal junction can cause an orbital (usually the HOMO or LUMO) of the molecule to fall between the Fermi levels of the electrodes and thus increase conductivity. [7,8] Molecules with well-defined and readily accessible redox states are, thus, attractive candidates for use in testing theories of electron transport (and perhaps for electronic devices), [4,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and a few examples are now known in which two or more metal redox centers organized in space and energy with respect to one another display electronic functions such as rectification and switching. [19,20] Here we report the first example of a metal-molecule-metal junction comprising two closely spaced alkane thiolate monolayers,