title: Ruthenium molecular wires with conjugated bridging ligands: onset of band formation in linear inorganic conjugated oligomers.
abstract: We have prepared and characterized a series of multimetallic oligomers of Ru using the pi-conjugated bridging ligand tetra-2-pyridyl-1,4-pyrazine (tppz), as well as mixed-ligand complexes with terpyridine end caps, and analyzed their electrochemical and spectroscopic properties, comparing them with modern computational electronic structure methods. The results suggest that the high degree of metal-metal interunit communication in these linear oligomers yields low HOMO-LUMO gaps, high delocalization, and the onset of "quasi-band" features, all indicative that these compounds should be excellent molecular wire materials. Recent spectroscopic and excited-state analyses of these and related compounds focus on optically accessible states, which ignore optically silent frontier electronic states more relevant to nanoelectronic applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Baker Laboratory, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853-1301, USA.
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Flores-Torres
authors.forename: Geoffrey R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Hutchison
authors.forename: Leonard J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Soltzberg
authors.forename: Héctor D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Abruña