Our institute has made research progress in supramolecular electronics at the single-molecule level
Recently, the research group led by Associate Professor Yang Yang from our institute, in collaboration with relevant research groups within the university, has made significant progress in the study of intermolecular σ-σ interactions in supramolecular electronics. The research findings have been published online in Nature Chemistry under the title "σ-σ Stacked supramolecular junctions" (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-022-01003-1, IF=24.274).
The schematic diagram of the supramolecular junctions of cyclohexane (left) and benzene ring (right), along with their corresponding electrical characterization results, are presented. Intermolecular interactions are an important fundamental issue in the study of various disciplines, including chemistry, materials science, biology, and medicine. For two conjugated molecules that are in close proximity, there is substantial experimental evidence demonstrating that they can interact through the stacking of π electron clouds, providing an effective pathway for electron transport between molecules. However, for non-conjugated molecular systems lacking π electrons, whether two molecules can interact through the stacking of σ electron clouds has long lacked direct experimental evidence. The research team utilized single-molecule electrical characterization techniques to construct individual non-conjugated cyclohexane supramolecular structures between two metal electrodes.
The experiments demonstrated that electrons can be transported through the σ-σ stacking interaction between two cyclohexane molecules, with an electronic transport capability comparable to that of two conjugated benzene rings interacting through π-π stacking. Further expansion of the research to the adamantane system revealed similar electrical transport effects, indicating that σ-σ stacking interaction has a certain degree of universality. This research work provides the first direct experimental evidence for the existence of σ-σ stacking interactions between non-conjugated molecules, paving a new way for the preparation of supramolecular devices using non-conjugated molecules and increasing the diversity of material structures. Associate Professor Yang Yang from our institute and Professor Hong Wenjing from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering are the co-corresponding authors of the paper, and postdoctoral researcher Feng Annie and doctoral student Zhou Yu are the co-first authors. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Key Research and Development Program, and the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, among other projects.
Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-022-01003-1
