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nanotimes News in Brief

10-05/06 :: May/June 2010

Organic Nanoelectronics // Researchers Use Metal Crystal to Organize Organic Materials, Overcoming Key Stumbling Block

Institut national de la recherche scientifique‘s Dr. Federico Rosei have effectively discovered a way to order molecules in PEDOT material, which can be used as a conductive polymer for plastic electronics applications.

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Dr. Perepichka: “It‘s a well known principle that the number of transistors in a computer chip doubles every two years,” he said, “but we are now reaching the physical limit. By using molecular materials instead of silicon semiconductor, we could one day build transistors that are ten times smaller than what currently exists.” The chips would in fact be only one molecule thick.

The technique sounds deceptively simple. The team used an inorganic material - a crystal of copper - as a template. When molecules are dropped onto the crystal, the crystal provokes a chemical reaction and creates a conducting polymer. By using a scanning probe microscope that enabled them to see surfaces with atomic resolution, the researchers discovered that the polymers had imitated the order of the crystal surface. The team is currently only able to produce the reaction in one dimension, i.e. to make a string or line of molecules. The next step will be to

n international team of researchers led by McGill‘s Dr. Dmitrii Perepichka and the

add a second dimension in order to make continuous sheets („organic graphite“) or electronic circuits.

Dr. Pereprichka‘s Laboratory at McGill: http://perepichka-group.mcgill.ca/

Dr. Rosei‘s Laboratory at the INRS-EMT: http://www.nanofemtolab.qc.ca/

J. A. Lipton-Duffin, J. A. Miwa, M. Kondratenko, F. Cicoira, B. G. Sumpter, V. Meunier, D. F. Perepichka, and F. Rosei: Step-by-step growth of epitaxially aligned polythiophene by surface-confined reaction, In: PNAS, Vol. 107(2010), Issue 25, June 22, 2010, Pages 11200-11204, DOI:10.1073/pnas.1000726107: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1000726107