Abstract
The construction of soft and processable organic material able to display metallic conduction properties - a large density of freely moving charges - is a major challenge for electronics. Films of doped conjugated polymers are widely used as semiconductor devices, but metallic-type transport in the bulk of such materials remains extremely rare. On the other hand, single-walled carbon nanotubes can exhibit remarkably low contact resistances with related large currents, but are intrinsically very difficult to isolate and process. Here, we describe the self-assembly of supramolecular organic nanowires between two metallic electrodes, from a solution of triarylamine derivative, under the simultaneous action of light and electric field triggers. They exhibit a combination of large conductivity values (>5 × 10 3 S m -1) and a low interface resistance (<2 × 10 -4 Ω m). Moreover, the resistance of nanowires in series with metal interfaces systematically decreases when the temperature is lowered to 1.5 K, revealing an intrinsic metallic behaviour.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 485-490 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Nature Chemistry |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2012 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Starting Grant (agreement no. 257099, to N.G.). The authors acknowledge the CNRS, the icFRC and the University of Strasbourg for financial support. Support from cleanroom facilities STnano is gratefully acknowledged, as well as the technical support of F. Chevrier, D. Spor, M. Acosta and S. Siegwald. This work was also partly funded by the NanoSciERA programme (project INTERNET, to B.D.), Agence Nationale de la Recherche projects MOSE and SUD (to B.D.), and projects Multiself and STANWs (to B.D., E.M., M.M. and N.G). This work was supported by doctoral fellowships of the French Ministry of Research (V.F., F.N. and J-B.B.) and Région Alsace (S.Z.).