Different mechanisms for hole and electron transfer along identical molecular bridges: the importance of the initial state delocalization.

We report measurements of hole and electron transfer along identical oligo-p-phenylene molecular bridges of increasing length. Although the injection barriers for hole and electron transfer are similar, we observed striking differences in the distance dependence and absolute magnitude of the rates of these two processes. Electron transfer is characterized by an almost distance-independent, fast charge-transfer rate. Hole transfer presents a much slower rate that decreases significantly with the length of the bridge. Time-dependent density functional calculations show that the observed differences can be explained by the delocalization of the respective initial excitation. The evaluation of the initial state is therefore essential when comparing charge-transfer rates between different donor-bridge-acceptor systems.

Electrical properties and mechanical stability of anchoring groups for single-molecule electronics.

We report on an experimental investigation of transport through single molecules, trapped between two gold nano-electrodes fabricated with the mechanically controlled break junction (MCBJ) technique. The four molecules studied share the same core structure, namely oligo(phenylene ethynylene) (OPE3), while having different aurophilic anchoring groups: thiol (SAc), methyl sulfide (SMe), pyridyl (Py) and amine (NH2). The focus of this paper is on the combined characterization of the electrical and mechanical properties determined by the anchoring groups. From conductance histograms we find that thiol anchored molecules provide the highest conductance; a single-level model fit to current-voltage characteristics suggests that SAc groups exhibit a higher electronic coupling to the electrodes, together with better level alignment than the other three groups. An analysis of the mechanical stability, recording the lifetime in a self-breaking method, shows that Py and SAc yield the most stable junctions while SMe form short-lived junctions. Density functional theory combined with non-equlibrium Green's function calculations help in elucidating the experimental findings.

Charge transfer versus molecular conductance: molecular orbital symmetry turns quantum interference rules upside down.

Destructive quantum interference has been shown to strongly reduce charge tunneling rates across molecular bridges. The current consensus is that destructive quantum interference occurs in cross-conjugated molecules, while linearly conjugated molecules exhibit constructive interference. Our experimental results on photoinduced charge transfer in donor-bridge-acceptor systems, however, show that hole transfer is ten times faster through a cross-conjugated biphenyl bridge than through a linearly conjugated biphenyl bridge. Electronic structure calculations reveal that the surprisingly low hole transfer rate across the linearly conjugated biphenyl bridge is caused by the presence of destructive instead of constructive interference. We find that the specific molecular orbital symmetry of the involved donor and acceptor states leads to interference conditions that are different from those valid in single molecule conduction experiments. Furthermore, the results indicate that by utilizing molecular orbital symmetry in a smart way new opportunities of engineering charge transfer emerge.

A sepiolite modified conducting polymer based biosensor.

A conducting polymer modified with sepiolite was utilized in the construction of a highly sensitive and fast amperometric cholesterol biosensor. In this study a monomer; (10,13-bis(2,3-dihydrothieno[3,4-b][1,4]dioxin-5-yl)dibenzo[a,c]phenazine (PHED)) was synthesized and then its polymer was coated on a graphite electrode by electropolymerization to obtain a matrix for enzyme immobilization. Cholesterol oxidase was immobilized onto polymer coated electrode by adsorption technique. Sepiolite was introduced for a successful immobilization of the cholesterol oxidase. Immobilized enzyme kinetic parameters (KM(app), Imax) were evaluated by Michaelis-Menten kinetics and calculated as 0.031 mM and 6.06 µA, respectively. LOD and sensitivity were estimated as 0.36 µM and 1.64 mA/mMcm(2). Characterization of designed biosensor was done to examine the effect of various factors such as enzyme amount, optimum pH and shelf-life. A novel accurate and inexpensive cholesterol biosensor was developed for the determination of total cholesterol in food samples.