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σ–σ Stacked supramolecular junctions

Nature Chemistry volume 14, pages 1158–1164 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Intermolecular charge transport plays an essential role in organic electronic materials and biological systems. To date, experimental investigations of intermolecular charge transport in molecular materials and electronic devices have been restricted to conjugated systems in which π–π stacking interactions are involved. Herein we demonstrate that the σ–σ stacking interactions between neighbouring non-conjugated molecules offer an efficient pathway for charge transport through supramolecular junctions. The conductance of σ–σ stacked molecular junctions formed between two non-conjugated cyclohexanethiol or single-anchored adamantane molecules is comparable to that of π–π stacked molecular junctions formed between π-conjugated benzene rings. The current–voltage characteristics and flicker noise analysis demonstrate the existence of stacked molecular junctions formed between the electrode pairs and exhibit the characteristics of through-space charge transport. Density functional theory calculations combined with the non-equilibrium Green’s function method reveal that efficient charge transport occurs between two molecules configured with σ–σ stacking interactions.

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Fig. 1: Break junction measurements of π-conjugated benzenethiol and non-conjugated cyclohexanethiol.
Fig. 2: Break junction measurements of adamantane-based non-conjugated supramolecular junctions.
Fig. 3: Investigation of I–V characteristics.
Fig. 4: Theoretical calculations of the transmission of molecular junctions.

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Data availability

All data that support the findings of this study are available within this article and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The data analysis of conductance measurements in this work was performed using our open-source code XMe analysis, which is available at Github (https://github.com/Pilab-XMU/XMe_DataAnalysis) and Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6578853).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos 21905238, 21673195, 21722305, 21973079), National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFA0204902) and Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (2021J06008). We thank J. Liu, J. Zheng, J. Bai, X. Li, Z. Tan and Y. Zhang for discussion during the preparation of the manuscript.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Anni Feng, Yu Zhou.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering & Innovation Laboratory for Sciences and Technologies of Energy Materials of Fujian Province (IKKEM) & Pen-Tung Sah Institute of Micro-Nano Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Anni Feng, Yu Zhou, Mohammed A. Y. Al-Shebami, Lichuan Chen, Zhichao Pan, Wei Xu, Shiqiang Zhao, Biaofeng Zeng, Zongyuan Xiao, Yang Yang & Wenjing Hong

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Contributions

W.H. and Y.Y. supervised this project. A.F. conceived the idea of molecular design and wrote the first version of this manuscript. A.F. and M.A.Y.A.-S. carried out the break junction experiments. A.F. analysed the data with the help of Z.P., S.Z. and Z.X.; Y.Z. performed theoretical calculations with the help of B.Z. and L.C.; and W.X. synthesized the molecules for the control experiment. All authors conceived the work and contributed to the revision of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yang Yang or Wenjing Hong.

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Feng, A., Zhou, Y., Al-Shebami, M.A.Y. et al. σ–σ Stacked supramolecular junctions. Nat. Chem. 14, 1158–1164 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-01003-1

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