Spintronic Devices for Molecular Electronics

Introduction

Significant advances of lithographic techniques in the last decades, lead to miniaturization of chip area in the semiconductor industry. These advances have shown a remarkable trend in that the amount of transistors per square centimeter on integrated circuits (chips) has doubled every 2 years, as described by Moore’s law. The problem is that current lithographic techniques cannot construct transistors that are much smaller than 10 nm, because of technological limitations. The aim of this project is to construct devices, that are smaller, more versatile, more robust and less power consuming than the standard CMOS transistors.

Project 1

There are a few vacant positions available for students who want to do their internship. The first project involves working on cobaltocene complexes. Little is known in literature about cobaltocenes, but are considered to be highly interesting for spintronic applications because of there unique electronic properties. Acetylene functionalities can be introduced in the aromatic five-membered ring of a cobaltocene molecule, and we would like to use this compound to perform click reactions on different azide functionalized substrates and measure the electronic characteristics and compare these with theoretical calculations (Scheme 1).

Scheme 1 Example of clicking ethynylcobaltocenium to a bis azide functionalized benzene

Project 2

The second project is somewhat more dedicated to porphyrin chemistry. We would like to synthesize a range of metallated tetra-phenyl porphyrins (TPP), and functionalize these with sulfur end groups. It’s known from literature that sulfur forms covalent bonds with gold surfaces, therefore we would like to cover (coat) these porphyrins on very small (<15 nm) gold nanoparticles (Scheme 2). The reason we do this is, is to create tiny magnetic domains which are expected to exhibit interesting magnetic and spintronic properties. This project will be merged with people from the magnet lab (HFML).

Scheme 2 Example of a sulfur functionalized porphyrin that is coated on a gold nanoparticle surface.

Project 3

Master Project Ferrocene and Cobaltocenium Functionalized Polyisocyanides

Roy Lensen (HG 03.227)

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