Organic insulators transformed into metal-like conductors.
by Katharine Sanderson/ NatureNews
Picture: The two chemicals can adopt a structure that conducts just like a metal.H. Alves et al./Nature Materials
Here’s a neat trick — press two pieces of different organic
insulating materials together, and where they touch they become
metallic conductors.
This is the first time that metallic
conduction has been seen at the interface between two different organic
materials. The discovery could lead to new applications in molecular
electronics, such as solar-power cells, and other devices that need to
work on very small scales.
Alberto Morpurgo and colleagues at Delft University of Technology in
the Netherlands, took crystals of two materials, tetrathiofulvalen
(TTF) and 7,7,8,8,-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ). They pressed the
crystals together, allowing electrostatic forces — much like those that
make dust cling to surfaces — to hold them against one another.
The
researchers then measured the resistance at four points along the
interface between the crystals, at a range of temperatures. The
resistance for the best samples ranged from 1,000 to 10,000 ohms per
sample (each sample was about 500 micrometres square)...
Full article: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080613/full/news.2008.890.html?s=news_rss
