A theoretical scaling relation for length-dependent conductance in oligo (phenylene ethynylene) molecular junctions with different anchoring groups
摘要
Charge transport in single-molecule junctions depends strongly on molecular length, backbone conjugation, and molecule–electrode coupling. In this work, density functional theory (DFT) combined with quantum transport calculations is used to investigate length-dependent conductance in oligo (phenylene ethynylene) (OPE) molecular wires terminated with amine (–NH2), thiol (–SH), and direct carbon (–C) contacts. For all anchoring groups, conductance decreases exponentially with increasing molecular length. The extracted attenuation factors show a clear dependence on anchoring groups: thiol- and carbon-terminated junctions exhibit similar decay constants (β ≈ 0.23–0.24 Å⁻1), whereas amine-terminated junctions display a smaller value (β ≈ 0.14 Å⁻1). The theoretical trends are consistent with previously reported STM, MCBJ, and CP-AFM measurements for OPE junctions. Finally, a theoretical scaling relation is derived that quantitatively connects conductance decay in alkane and OPE molecular wires. The proposed relation reproduces both theoretical calculations and experimental datasets with high accuracy (R2 ≈ 0.89–0.93) and provides a theoretical framework for understanding conductance scaling across structurally distinct molecular wires.