Ferrocene as Functional Subunits in Macrocycles

The interdisciplinary field of molecular electronics, describes the use of molecules in electronic devices and deals with the central question of how electrons move through a single molecule. The research spans chemistry, physics and material science and is focused on the investigation of the structure-property relationship of functional molecules as well as their implementation in an electrical circuit. Thereby, the chemists' role is to synthesize tailormade compounds at a molecular level of control that mimic the features of conventional electronic components such as rectifiers, switches or transistors. This PhD thesis is mainly focused on the design and syntheses of ferrocene grafted phenylethynyl backbones that are rotationally restricted through cyclization. The redox-active ferrocene unit acts as decisive functional entity in the construct. Alteration in the oxidation state of ferrocene has a direct influence on the molecular energy level and thus the electronic properties of the molecule. The ability to externally address and control the energy level of the molecule is a central feature and of great importance for the construction of components for single molecule electronics.

The thesis is segmented into 4 chapters, whereat chapter 1 - 3 discuss the synthesis and characterization of the functional molecules and chapter 4 provides the experimental details of all compounds described throughout the thesis. Each chapter is introduced individually and the projects are put into the scientific context which is relevant to the described work and illustrated with a few examples.