2023/01/13 by Maryana Asaad, Andrea Vezzoli, Asaad, Maryana +15
Energy · Engineering · Materials Science · #Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion #FOS: Physical sciences #Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2301.05654
openalex publication_date 2023/01/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The final performance of a molecular electronic device is determined by the chemical structure of the molecular wires used in its assembly. Molecular place-exchange was used to incorporate di-thioacetate terminated molecules into ordered arrays of dodecanethiol capped gold nanoparticles. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed successful molecular replacement. Room-temperature molecular conductance of a statistically large number of devices reveals that conductance is enhanced by up to two orders of magnitude for the di-thioacetate terminated molecules. Density functional theory transport calculations were performed on five different configurations of the di-thioacetate molecules between gold electrodes, and the calculated average conductance values are in good agreement with the conductance experimentally-observed trend. Our findings highlight important cooperative effects of bridging neighboring gold nanoparticles and choice of appropriate molecular wires when designing devices for efficient transport.