Exploiting molecular conformation changes

Molecular semi-conductors

One of the many compelling attractions of molecular semiconductors is their ability to change shape. That’s why this project is so exciting: its researchers are investigating a previously unexamined family of bi-stable small-molecular weight molecules that demonstrate fully reversible 60% changes in length. This work could impact semiconductor device technology, particularly future generations of single-molecule electronic devices. Transistors comprised of these flexible molecules would likely possess superior switching characteristics, with lower power dissipation than conventional inorganic transistors. Additionally, these molecules could store and read information. The read and write time of such a molecular memory is expected to be extremely fast, and information densities are limited fundamentally only by the nanometric dimensions of a single bi-stable molecule.