One dimensional molecular wires using tailored-to-the-purpose chemistry

Abstract

This research aims at the realization and electric/magnetic characterization of molecular wires. The exciting and unique bottom-up nano electronic system is motivated by recent experimental work. Although silicon-based integrated circuits will most probably remain dominant in the next decades, it is very likely that alternative electron device concepts and architectures will be necessary to go beyond the 10 nm feature size limit. These novel electronic devices will not only contribute to further miniaturization, but also open up the route to radically different device concepts. Particularly interesting in this respect, is hybrid inorganic-organic nano electronics in which inorganic materials are combined with molecular building blocks to arrive at novel functionality. The general challenges in designing molecules, which show interesting electronic and magnetic behavior. This master thesis discuss these hybrid inorganic-organic materials which are organometallic complexes from different ligands (schiff bases and nitrile ligands ) with different metal ions (copper, cobalt and nickel). Molecules that bear heteroatoms with a free lone pair of electrons will provide unpaired spins that are expected to couple to each other inside the wires. In this thesis a set of compounds were synthesized and characterized chemically, electrically and magnetically to check if they show systematic changes to functional groups in order to tailor-for-the-purpose the electronic and magnetic behavior.