Experimental and theoretical investigations of functional supramolecular assemblies

Abstract

With the discovery of conducting polymers in the late 1990s the field of organic electronics has seen an enormous activity from a range of researchers including chemists to physicists. As the physics and chemistry of these polymers are being understood and appreciated, an emerging field of oligomer or small molecular electronics has taken birth. Assembling these oligomers using non-covalent interactions which are so ubiquitously found in nature, chemists have contributed immensely to small molecular approach to electronics. The assembly of these small molecules is important because, the performance or the efficiency of the organic electronic devices depend not only on the molecular structure but also on its organisation in the active layer of the device. In this chapter an introduction is given to the supramolecular chemistry and its use in assembling small functional molecules to obtain self-assembled systems and their applications in molecular electronic devices as reported in literature.