The versatility and variability of molecular components and conformers offer infinite possibilities for developing all kinds of molecular electronics. Because of abundant conformers and configurations, molecules are capable of possessing multiple conducting states, which is the vital foundation for the realization of molecular multi-valued logic circuits (such as ternary, quaternary circuits), different from traditional silicon-based binary logic circuits and voltage-threshold schemed multi-valued circuits. In particular, quantum interference is the unique modulation for molecular electronics with comparable size to coherent electron phases. But so far, majority of researches have just discussed single pattern of molecular quantum interference, such as through-bond quantum interference or through-space quantum interference which just modulate conductance between two states. There are barely any researches discussing the synergistic effect of through-bond pathway and through-space pathway, and the in-depth mechanism is not clear yet. Therefore, in order to figure out how through-space and through-bond pathway exerts their effect on conductance and how they interfere with each other, this work designs a series of heterocycle derivatives based on ortho-phenylene to realize respective modulation on through-space and through-bond pathway and demonstrate the muti-channel synergistic effect in terms of molecular orbitals, achieving multi-valued output for molecular circuits which is a proof-of-concept for the construction of molecular multi-valued circuits.
Ph. D. candidate Jinshi Li in our group is the first author of this article, and this work has been published on Journal of the American Chemical Society (DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c00322).
