Employing single molecules as electronic circuit building blocks is a promising approach toward the design of miniaturized electronic devices e.g. switches and sensors. We use our ability to control the electronic structure and orientation of single molecules between two electrodes to determine their relative impact on single-molecule conductance. Particularly, we show that small benzene derivatives that are anisotropic exhibit orientation dependent conductance, i.e., higher conductivity in the measurement perpendicular to the molecular plane relative to the measurement along the molecular plane. In this study, we show that charge transport perpendicular to the molecular plane can be tuned using chemical substituents by shifting the frontier orbital levels relative to the Fermi level of the electrodes. We build our study on the measured conductance of mesitylene perpendicular to its aromatic ring (0.13 G0) and use electron-withdrawing groups (e.g., Br and NO2) to study the induced changes in conductance. Charge transport measurements perpendicular to tribromomesitylene and trinitromesitylene show higher conductance, 0.17 G0 and 0.26 G0, respectively. Density functional theory (DFT) and non-equilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) calculated conductances are in good agreement with the experimental findings. Our study provides fundamental knowledge to develop complex and practical architectures for future nanoelectronic devices.

Impact of molecular electronic structure on anisotropic single molecule conductance

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.