Dithiocarbamate anchoring in molecular wire junctions: a first principles study

Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCU
Li, Zhenyu;Kosov, Daniel S.
Abstract

Recent experimental realization [J. Am. Chem. Soc., 127 (2005) 7328] of various dithiocarbamate self-assembly on gold surface opens the possibility for use of dithiocarbamate linkers to anchor molecular wires to gold electrodes. In this paper, we explore this hypothesis computationally. We computed the electron transport properties of 4,4'-bipyridine (BP), 4,4'-bipyridinium-1,1'-bis(carbodithioate) (BPBC), 4-(4'-pyridyl)-peridium-1-carbodithioate (BPC) molecule junctions based on the density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green's functions. We demonstrated that the stronger molecule−electrode coupling associated with the conjugated dithiocarbamate linker broadens transmission resonances near the Fermi energy. The broadening effect along with the extension of the π conjugation from the molecule to the gold electrodes lead to enhanced electrical conductance for BPBC molecule. The conductance enhancement factor is as large as 25 at applied voltage bias 1.0 V. Rectification behavior is predicted for BPC molecular wire junction, which has the asymmetric anchoring groups.

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110

ISBN/ISSN

1520-5207

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Issue

20

Pages Count

6

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Publisher

American Chemical Society

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DOI

10.1021/jp0610665