Electrical Matching at Metal/Molecule Contacts for Efficient Heterogeneous Charge Transfer.

ACS Nano

Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan.

Published: February 2018

In a metal/molecule hybrid system, unavoidable electrical mismatch exists between metal continuum states and frontier molecular orbitals. This causes energy loss in the electron conduction across the metal/molecule interface. For efficient use of energy in a metal/molecule hybrid system, it is necessary to control interfacial electronic structures. Here we demonstrate that electrical matching between a gold substrate and π-conjugated molecular wires can be obtained by using monatomic foreign metal interlayers, which can change the degree of d-π* back-donation at metal/anchor contacts. This interfacial control leads to energy level alignment between the Fermi level of the metal electrode and conduction molecular orbitals, resulting in resonant electron conduction in the metal/molecule hybrid system. When this method is applied to molecule-modified electrocatalysts, the heterogeneous electrochemical reaction rate is considerably improved with significant suppression of energy loss at the internal electron conduction.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.7b07223DOI Listing

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