This book describes contemporary efforts to develop nano-molecular systems for future molecular electronics, in which single molecules act as basic elements in electrical circuits. While describing frontier research, it also gives a comprehensive introduction and discusses the related work being pursued worldwide. The book is composed of three parts. The first part describes the synthesis of novel molecules for molecular nano-systems. The second part deals mainly with nano-molecular systems on solid surfaces and the evaluation of the system with SPM. The third part reviews the theory required as a background for molecular electronics.

Klappentext

Recently, molecular electronics, especially that utilizing single molecules, has been attracting much attention. This is mainly because the theoretical limit is approaching in the present silicon-based technology, and the development of an alternative process is strongly desired. Single-molecule electronics is aimed at a breakthrough toward the next generation of computing systems. By designing and synthesizing highly functionalized molecules of nanometer size and incorporating these molecules into electrical circuits, we shall obtain much dense and high-speed processors. The concept of single-molecule electronics was first introduced by Aviram and Ratnar in 1978. In the early 1980s, many groups all over the world had started research on molecular electronics. At that time, single-molecule manipulation techniques had not been born, and the research was mainly carried out on molecular films formed by the Langmuir~Blodgett technique, a wet process, and by molecular-beam epitaxy, a dry process. A number of prototypes of switching devices and logic gates were, however, reported in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, scanning probe microscopes became popular and researchers obtained a single-molecule manipulation and evaluation tech­ nique. It became possible to fabricate practical devices using single molecules or small numbers of molecules. Finally, at the end of the last century, an explosion in the research field of single-molecule electronics was witnessed. In addition, studies of "biocomputing" started in the early 1980s and significant progress was achieved in the last century.

Inhalt

I Synthetic Approaches to Nanomolecular Systems.- 1 Dynamic Redox Systems: Towards the Realization of Unimolecular Memory.- 2 Photoswitching of Intramolecular Magnetic Interaction Using Photochromic Compounds.- 3 Single-Molecule Magnets.- 4 Atomic Resolution of Porphyrins: Single-Molecule Observations of Porphyrinoid Compounds by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy.- II Surface Molecular Systems.- 5 Carboxylates Adsorbed on TiO2(110).- 6 Self-Assembled Monolayers for Molecular Nanoelectronics.- 7 Supramolecular Chemistry on Solid Surfaces.- 8 Semiconductor and Molecular-Assembly Nanowires.- 9 Control of Dye Aggregates in Microscopic Polymer Matrices.- III Theory of Nanomolecular Systems.- 10 Theoretical Calculations of Electrical Properties of Nanoscale Systems Under the Influence of Electric Fields and Currents.- 11 Nanodevices for Quantum Computing Using Photons.