Metal/molecule/metal junction studies of organometallic and coordination complexes; What can transition metals do for molecular electronics?

The science of ‘molecular’ electronics has been stimulated by the evolution of reliable techniques for fabricating and testing metal/single molecule/metal junctions over the last fifteen years. Transition metals offer the possibilities of redox activity, stable paramagnetic states and, in some cases, relatively narrow HOMO−LUMO separation, factors that make them of interest for incorporation into such junctions. In this short review, we describe our progress to develop reliable contacts for organometallic molecular wires, to test the effects of incorporating metal centres into molecular wires, and to examine the electrochemical gating of redox-active coordination complexes.