Effective Gating in Single-Molecule Junctions through Fano Resonances.

The successful incorporation of molecules as active circuit elements relies on the ability to tune their electronic properties through chemical design. A synthetic strategy that has been used to manipulate and gate circuit conductance involves attaching a pendant substituent along the molecular conduction pathway. However, such a chemical gate has not yet been shown to significantly modify conductance.

Investigating Design Rules for Photoinduced Electron Transfer Quenching in Triangulenium Probes.

Fluorescent probes based on photoinduced electron transfer (PET) quenching of long lifetime triangulenium fluorophores have found multiple applications. For such probes a successful design relies on the right balance between the rate of PET quenching and fluorescence. In a series of ADOTA (A) and DAOTA (D) triangulenium fluorophores appended with aniline-like quencher moieties, we have investigated the rate of quenching and its relation to thermodynamic driving force, distance, and conjugation within the quencher moiety.

Utilizing Selective Chlorination to Synthesize New Triangulenium Dyes.

Functionalization of new sites on the triangulenium structure has been achieved by early-stage chlorination with -chlorosuccinimide (NCS), giving rise to two new triangulenium dyes ( and ). By introducing the chlorine functionalities in the acridinium precursor, positions complementary to those previously obtained by electrophilic aromatic substitution on the final dyes are accessed. The chlorination is selective, giving only one regioisomer for both mono- and dichlorination products.