Issue 4, 2017

Tuning the polarity of charge carriers using electron deficient thiophenes

Abstract

Thiophene-1,1-dioxide (TDO) oligomers have fascinating electronic properties. We previously used thermopower measurements to show that a change in charge carrier from hole to electron occurs with increasing length of TDO oligomers when single-molecule junctions are formed between gold electrodes. In this article, we show for the first time that the dominant conducting orbitals for thiophene/TDO oligomers of fixed length can be tuned by altering the strength of the electron acceptors incorporated into the backbone. We use the scanning tunneling microscope break-junction (STM-BJ) technique and apply a recently developed method to determine the dominant transport channel in single-molecule junctions formed with these systems. Through these measurements, we find that increasing the electron affinity of thiophene derivatives, within a family of pentamers, changes the polarity of the charge carriers systematically from holes to electrons, with some systems even showing mid-gap transport characteristics.

Graphical abstract: Tuning the polarity of charge carriers using electron deficient thiophenes

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
01 Dec 2016
Accepted
16 Feb 2017
First published
28 Feb 2017
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2017,8, 3254-3259

Tuning the polarity of charge carriers using electron deficient thiophenes

J. Z. Low, B. Capozzi, J. Cui, S. Wei, L. Venkataraman and L. M. Campos, Chem. Sci., 2017, 8, 3254 DOI: 10.1039/C6SC05283E

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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