Nature of Electron Transport by Pyridine-Based Tripodal Anchors: Potential for Robust and Conductive Single-Molecule Junctions with Gold Electrodes

作者：Ie Yutaka; Hirose Tomoya; Nakamura Hisao^*; Kiguchi Manabu; Takagi Noriaki; Kawai Maki; Aso Yoshio

来源：Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2011, 133(9): 3014-3022.

DOI：10.1021/ja109577f

We have designed and synthesized a pyridine-based tripodal anchor unit to construct a single-molecule junction with a gold electrode. The advantage of tripodal anchoring to a gold surface was unambiguously demonstrated by cyclic voltanunetry measurements. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements indicated that the A orbital of pyridine contributes to the physical adsorption of the tripodal anchor unit to the gold surface, The conductance of a single-molecule junction that consists of the tripodal anchor and diphenyl acetylene was measured by modified scanning tunneling microscope techniques and successfully determined to be 5 +/- 1 x 10(-4) G(0.) Finally, by analyzing the transport mechanism based on ab initio calculations, the participation of the pi orbital of the anchor moieties was predicted. The tripodal structure is expected to form a robust junction, and pyridine is predicted to achieve pi-channel electric transport.

• 出版日期2011-3-9