Photoemission Spectroscopy Experiments on Metalloporphyrin Architectures for Molecular Electronics

Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) based on metalloporphyrin architectures combine advantages of both organic and inorganic materials and therefore are interesting candidates for next generation molecular electronic devices and applications. They exhibit unique properties such as highly ordered structures, ultrahigh surface area, tunable nanopore size, and more interestingly tailorable electronic, and ionic properties.
In this work, we present Liquid Phase Epitaxy method to fabricate self-assembled monolayers on gold surfaces which enabled to host conductive MOFs with their ability to facilitate charge transfer and control the growth of the MOF thin films.
We used Photoemission Spectroscopy (PES) to reveal the electronic properties which is crucial for the construction of energy band diagrams of various metalloporphyrin derivatives coordinated to either copper or zinc based metal ions. The energy band diagrams revealed interesting details about the electronic properties when changing various metal ions or conductive ligands. The obtained results show the fabricated films exhibit semiconductor tunability of either p-type or n-type behavior as conducting medium of charge carrier transport which is a key prerequisite to build molecular electronic junctions and elaborated devices.