Doping molecular wires.

ABSTRACT

The concept of doping inorganic semiconductors enabled their successful application in electronic devices. Furthermore, the discovery of metal-like conduction in doped polymers started the entire field of organic electronics. In the present theoretical study, we extend the concept of doping to monomolecular wires suspended between two metal electrodes. Upon doping, the conductivity of representative model systems is found to increase by 2 orders of magnitude. More importantly, by providing a thorough understanding of the underlying mechanisms, our results pave the way for the development of novel molecular components envisioned as functional units in nanoscale devices.