Unimolecular electrical rectification in hexadecylquinolinium tricyanoquinodimethanide

Metzger RM; Chen B; Hopfner U; Lakshmikantham MV; Vuillaume D; Kawai T; Wu XL; Tachibana H; Hughes TV; Sakurai H; Baldwin JW; Hosch C; Cava MP; Brehmer L; Ashwell GJ

Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.119, No.43, 10455-10466, 1997

Metzger RM, Chen B, Hopfner U, Lakshmikantham MV, Vuillaume D, Kawai T, Wu XL, Tachibana H, Hughes TV, Sakurai H, Baldwin JW, Hosch C, Cava MP, Brehmer L, Ashwell GJ

Macroscopic and nanoscopic current-voltage measurements reveal asymmetries in the DC electrical conductivity through Langmuir-Blodgett multilayers and even monolayers of gamma-(n-hexadecyl)quinolinum tricyano-quinodimethanide, C(16)H(33)Q-3CNQ (5) These asymmetries are due to a transition of the ground-state zwitterion to an excited-state conformer which is probably neutral. Unimolecular electrical rectification by monolayers of 5 is unequivocally confirmed.