Using circumacenes to improve organic electronics and molecular electronics: design clues

Theoretical modeling is used here to ascertain the potential use of circumacenes to improve the transport parameters of pi-conjugated materials acting as: (i) the layered molecular constituent for organic electronic devices; and (ii) the molecular component of gold-molecule-gold nanobridges for molecular electronic device use. It is concluded that, to a first approximation, the molecular length or, alternatively, the HOMO-LUMO gap (HOMO: highest occupied molecular orbital; LUMO: lowest unoccupied molecular orbital) can be used to relate the two transport regimes usually found in these two fields, thus serving as a key design parameter for guaranteeing good performance of circumanthracene for both regimes. It is also clearly established that going beyond this simple relationship requires knowledge of the detailed molecule-contact geometry of the molecular nanobridge, and how its tremendous impact on the binding strength and the conductance prevents blind extrapolation of results obtained for molecular nanobridges built by means of different experimental set-ups.