Electron Transport in Molecular Circuits

by Prof. Veerabhadrarao Kaliginedi (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Tuesday, January 3, 2017 from 14:30 to 15:30 (Asia/Kolkata)
at AG-69

Description

The idea of building electronic devices using single molecule as active component was first proposed by Aviram and Ratner in the early seventies. Indeed, molecules are of great interest for application in electronic devices because of their small size, their recognition properties, their ability of self-organization and their possibility of chemical modification and customisation. Thus, the ability to measure and control charge transport across metal/molecule/metal junction is of considerable fundamental interest and represents a key step towards the development of molecular electronic devices.

In the first part of my presentation, I will introduce working principle our measurement techniques (i.e STM break junctions (STM-BJ), mechanically controllable break junction (MCBJ) and Conducting probe AFM (CP-AFM) technique).^1,2 Using the results from several case studies, I will try to demonstrate a frame work for building a molecular circuit theory based on metal/molecule/metal junctions at single molecular level.^2,3,4,5 In the later part of my presentation, I will discuss the results mainly focusing on bottom up fabrication of smart surfaces and exploiting the functionality of these smart surfaces for different applications ranging from molecular electronics to catalysis and energy storage/conversion.^5,6

References:

1. Hong, W.J et al., Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011. 2, 699-713.

2. Kaliginedi et al., Journal of American chemical society. 2012, 134
(11), 5262–5275.

3. Seth, C., Kaliginedi et al., Chemical Science. 2016, Accepted
(DOI: 10.1039/C6SC03204D).

4. Moreno-Garcia et al., Journal of American chemical society. 2013,
135(33), 12228−12240.

5. Kaliginedi et al., Nanoscale. 2015, 7 (42), 17685-17692.

6. Kaliginedi et al., Science Advances. 2016, under revision.