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Wiley, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 4(53), p. 1098-1102, 2013

DOI: 10.1002/anie.201308398

Wiley, Angewandte Chemie, 4(126), p. 1116-1120, 2013

DOI: 10.1002/ange.201308398

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Single-molecule sensing of environmental pH - An STM break junction and NEGF-DFT approach

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This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

Sensors play a significant role in the detection of toxic species and explosives, and in the remote control of chemical processes. In this work, we report a single-molecule-based pH switch/sensor that exploits the sensitivity of dye molecules to environmental pH to build metal-molecule-metal (m-M-m) devices using the scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) break junction technique. Dyes undergo pH-induced electronic modulation due to reversible structural transformation between a conjugated and a nonconjugated form, resulting in a change in the HOMO-LUMO gap. The dye-mediated m-M-m devices react to environmental pH with a high on/off ratio (≈100:1) of device conductivity. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations, carried out under the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) framework, model charge transport through these molecules in the two possible forms and confirm that the HOMO-LUMO gap of dyes is nearly twice as large in the nonconjugated form as in the conjugated form.