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Ordered Arrays of Gold Nanoparticles Crosslinked by Dithioacetate Linkers for Molecular devices

The final performance of a molecular electronic device is determined by the chemical structure of the molecular wires used in its assembly. Molecular place-exchange was used to incorporate di-thioacetate terminated molecules into ordered arrays of dodecanethiol capped gold nanoparticles. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed successful molecular replacement. Room-temperature molecular conductance of a statistically large number of devices reveals that conductance is enhanced by up to two orders of magnitude for the di-thioacetate terminated molecules. Density functional theory transport calculations were performed on five different configurations of the di-thioacetate molecules between gold electrodes, and the calculated average conductance values are in good agreement with the conductance experimentally-observed trend. Our findings highlight important cooperative effects of bridging neighboring gold nanoparticles and choice of appropriate molecular wires when designing devices for efficient transport.