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Updated: Jan 3, 2026

Author Spotlight: Experimental Approaches for the Synthesis of Low-Valent Metal-Organic Frameworks from Multitopic Phosphine Linkers
Published on: May 12, 2023
Three site molecular orbital controlled single-molecule rectifiers based on perpendicularly linked porphyrin-imide
Murni Handayani1, Hirofumi Tanaka2, Shinichi Katayose3
1Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, 1-1 Machikaneyama-cho, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan. ogawa@chem.sci.osaka-u.ac.jp and Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Research Center for Metallurgy and Materials, Building 470, PUSPIPTEK Area, Cisauk, Tangerang Selatan, Banten 15314, Indonesia.
Abstract:
The original single-molecule rectifier proposed by Aviram and Ratner is based on a donor-σ-acceptor structure, in which σ functions as the insulator to disconnect the π electronic systems of the two parts. However, there have been no reports on experimentally demonstrated highly efficient single-molecule rectifiers based on this mechanism. In this paper, we demonstrate single-molecule rectifiers with perpendicularly connected metal porphyrin-imide dyads. Our proposed molecule rectifiers use hydroxyl groups at both ends as weak anchoring groups. Measurements of the single-molecule current-voltage characteristics of these molecules clearly show that the rectification ratio reached a high value of 14 on average. Moreover, the ratio could be tuned by changing the central metal in the porphyrin core. All of these features can be explained by the energy-level shift of the molecular orbital using a model with three electronic parts.
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