Themed collection Molecular Wires

Guest editors Dirk M. Guldi, Hiroshi Nishihara and Latha Venkataraman introduce the Molecular Wires issue of Chemical Society Reviews.

The measurement of thermopower in molecular junctions offers complementary information to conductance measurements and is becoming essential for the understanding of transport processes at the nanoscale.

This review focuses on the bottom-up fabrication of linear and branched bis(terpyridine)metal complex wires on electrode surfaces, which feature distinct and characteristic electronic functionalities such as intra-wire redox conduction and excellent long-range electron transport ability.

In this review, we discuss the factors that influence electron transfer in peptides.

Constructing electronic circuits containing singly wired molecules is at the frontier of electrical device miniaturisation. Understanding the behaviour of different anchoring groups is key to this goal because of their significant role in determining the properties of the junction.

Arrays of metal nanoparticles in an organic matrix have attracted a lot of interest due to their diverse electronic and optoelectronic properties.

We highlight recent progress in the field of electron transport through molecular bridges as integrative parts of electron donor–bridge–acceptor conjugates.

Artist impression of a single-molecule transistor, where a molecule is connected to the source and the drain electrodes. The red lines illustrated the electric field caused by the gate electrode, located below.

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) can characterize intriguing nanoparticle properties towards solid-state nanodevices.

Conjugated porphyrin arrays that possess delocalised electronic networks have, for the most part, been assembled by using alkene or alkyne type bridging units or by directly connecting individual porphyrin chromophores with multiple bonds to form fused porphyrin arrays.

This tutorial review highlights recent developments using break junction techniques, and emphasizes the concept of “electrochemical gating” on single-molecule junctions.

This tutorial outlines the basic theoretical concepts and tools which underpin the fundamentals of phase-coherent electron transport through single molecules.

Development and applications of tetrathiafulvalene-fused electron donor–acceptor systems will be covered within this tutorial review.

This tutorial review focuses on photo-induced charge/energy transfer in covalently linked donor–bridge–acceptor (D–B–A) systems.