New functional materials for molecular electronics and energy storage.

Suggested project is focused on the development of new building blocks for molecular electronics and energy storage. Main goal will be the synthesis of new molecular switching elements, which are capable of interaction with gold electrodes representing the conducting support of the future electronic devices. Two types of new organic structures have been suggested to proof the concept of molecular switching at the single molecule level. One contains a triarylcarbocation center that upon capture of a cyanide anion can be transformed back to the carbocation. The other one is the sandwich-like pyridinium platform that can store two electrons in the chemical bond. Both systems should be able to switch between low conducting and high conducting state by the application of the external stimuli, which would allow such a switch to oscillate between the ON and OFF state by the formation of a single chemical bond on the path from the reactant to the product and back. An integral part of this study will be the demonstration of the high ON/OFF switching ratio in terms of the single molecule conductance values and the ability to assess the sufficiently high degree of the conversion during the switching process within a reasonable time span. This last requirement represents the necessary condition for a functional single molecule device that encodes digital information through switching between two states and reading the information by monitoring the electrical conductance of each state. This work will also contribute to the demonstration of the electrically triggered reactions at the single molecule level. Results will be published in peer-reviewed international journals. The participation of students is expected to further strengthen the cooperation between the Department of Electrochemistry at the Nanoscale and the ITODYS laboratory.