Polarizability is a key parameter for molecular electronics

Abstract

Even though molecular electronics has been developed for more than twenty years, and already explored using polyoxometalates, the electronic behavior in such systems has commonly been interpreted according to the electronic levels of the molecular constituents. The new concept here is to think about electron transport across molecules in terms of polarizability, which is the propensity of the electronic density of a molecule to reorganize under an electrical field. To vary polarizability only in a series of molecules, new hybrid polyoxometalates have been synthesized, whose physical properties have been adjusted by modifying the nature of their central heteroatom. As polarizability is directly linked to the dielectric constant, commonly used by several communities of physicist – e.g. in condensed matter, micro and nanoelectronics – the present work opens a new bridge between two ways of thinking about charge transport.