Molecular electronics is the branch that specializes on the study and development of different molecular systems and their arrangement to function as electronic components. One of the focus of molecular electronics is the design and study of devices that could transport charge in one direction but suppresses it in the opposite direction, this property is known as molecular rectification. On the present work, we characterized the dependence of intrinsic rectification ratio (RR) with respect the length of the system. The molecular junction was arranged in the usual Electrode-Molecule-Electrode set up, where the electrodes were gold nanowires attached to the molecules via thiolate anchoring groups. Our molecules are organized as Donor-Bridge-Acceptor (D-B-A), where the Donor and Acceptor regions are aromatic rings with amine and nitro substituents respectively and the bridge is based on acetylenes and phenylene units. We varied the number of bridge units and we found that there is a significant increase of the RR when the number of units is equal to 3. We found RR of up to 5.62 at 0.25 V and 3 phenylene units as a bridge. We aim to contribute in the future design of molecular electronics and the characterization of the rectification with respect the length to inspire possible synthesis of optimal molecular diodes.

Theoretical studies on the length dependence of molecular rectification

2019 Spring National Meeting

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