Unimolecular rectifier

The idea was first proposed in 1974 by Arieh (later Ari) Aviram, then at IBM, and Mark Ratner, then at New York University.

Many potential rectifying molecules were studied by the groups of Robert Melville Metzger, Charles A. Panetta, and Daniell L. Mattern (University of Mississippi) between 1981 and 1991, but were not tested successfully for conductivity.

[8] Some more perylene based organic rectifiers with PEG (polyethylene glycol) swallowtails have been synthesized in Mattern's lab by Ramakrishna Samudrala.

Single molecules bonded covalently to gold have been studied by scanning tunneling spectroscopy and some of them are unimolecular rectifiers, studied as single molecules, as shown by the groups of Luping Yu (University of Chicago) and Ashwell (later at Lancaster University, UK).

The driving idea in UE (also called molecular-scale electronics) is that properly designed "electroactive" molecules, of between 1 and 3 nm in length, can supplant silicon-based devices to reduce circuit component sizes, providing concomitant increase in maximum integrated circuit speeds.

Hydrogen can be removed from individual H 2 TPP molecules by applying excess voltage to the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STAM, a); this removal alters the current-voltage (I-V) curves of TPP molecules, measured using the same STM tip, from diode -like (red curve in b) to resistor -like (green curve). Image (c) shows a row of TPP, H 2 TPP and TPP molecules. While scanning image (d), excess voltage was applied to H 2 TPP at the black dot, which instantly removed hydrogen, as shown in the bottom part of (d) and in the re-scan image (e). [ 1 ]