Linking Excited Molecules and Ordered Nanoparticles – LEMON

Gordon Moore’s conjecture predicts a doubling of the number of transistors in a microprocessor every two years at a constant cost, which has been true since the early 1960’s. Miniaturization is now facing intrinsic physical limits like tunnel conduction through the gate thickness or the miscibility limit for low concentration doping in a transistor made of only few thousands of atoms. Replacing conventional semiconductors by a single molecule as an elementary unit would be the technological gap to bridge to take after G. Moore. Admittedly, connecting molecules to electrodes at the nanometer range is not a trivial question, the main challenge being to offer a versatile technology with a large surface high density integration capacity and compatible with multi-scale characterization tools .

The LEMON project targets over 36 months the development and the study of isolated hybrid nanostructured surfaces combining a nanosize network of core-shell plasmonic nanoparticles ordered over macroscopic scale, with organic molecules linking adjacent nanoparticles (NP). The capacity of NP to grow on alumina film on Ni3Al(111) substrate in a long-range ordered network and molecules to self-assemble on this nanostructure enables to combine multi-scale probes. Photonic properties of molecules are strongly modified by the local electric field and the NP size, which give rise to rich physical phenomena with tunable parameters like exaltation of molecular photo-physical response due to the interaction with surface plasmon resonance modes located on and in-between neighbor NP, or electron and energy transfer between molecule and NP.

We believe this new system, consisting of a nanoscale ordered assembly functionalized by organic molecules, to be a promising alternative route to obtain the necessary elementary bricks for future high density, low consumption molecular electronics thanks to its ability to self-organize at nanoscale and its tunable physical properties.