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  • Review Article
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Chemical principles of single-molecule electronics

Abstract

The field of single-molecule electronics harnesses expertise from engineering, physics and chemistry to realize circuit elements at the limit of miniaturization; it is a subfield of nanoelectronics in which the electronic components are single molecules. In this Review, we survey the field from a chemical perspective and discuss the structure–property relationships of the three components that form a single-molecule junction: the anchor, the electrode and the molecular bridge. The spatial orientation and electronic coupling between each component profoundly affect the conductance properties and functions of the single-molecule device. We describe the design principles of the anchor group, the influence of the electronic configuration of the electrode and the effect of manipulating the structure of the molecular backbone and of its substituent groups. We discuss single-molecule conductance switches as well as the phenomenon of quantum interference and then trace their fundamental roots back to chemical principles.

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Figure 1: A schematic of a single-molecule junction with electrode, anchor and bridge components.
Figure 2: Anchor group archetypes and the nature of charge carriers for common dative anchors.
Figure 3: Tuning the structure of the anchor, electrode and bridge to modulate charge-transport properties in single-molecule junctions.
Figure 4: Single-molecule conductance switches and quantum interference features.
Figure 5: Pen-and-paper methods to predict quantum interference.

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Acknowledgements

T.A.S. is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship under grant no. 11-44155. The authors thank the NSF for support under grant no. CHE-1404922.

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Correspondence to Michael L. Steigerwald, Latha Venkataraman or Colin Nuckolls.

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Su, T., Neupane, M., Steigerwald, M. et al. Chemical principles of single-molecule electronics. Nat Rev Mater 1, 16002 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2016.2

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