Press Release

Development of a purely organic single-component conductor in a metallic state

January 10, 2013

The University of Tokyo
High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)
Comprehensive Research Organization for Science and Society (CROSS)

The team led by Professor Hatsumi Mori at the Institute for Solid State Physics, the University of Tokyo, developed a new type of purely organic single-component conductor. This material has the highest room-temperature conductivity (19 Scm^-1) and transitions into a metallic state at the lowest pressure (~10 k atm) among purely organic single-component conductors.

Organic materials are generally used as insulators such as an insulating coating of a wire; however, organic materials that are highly conductive, similar to copper wire, are being aimed to develop in the field of organic electronics. So far, single-component organic conductors that have been developed are semiconductors with room-temperature conductivities of 10^-6~10^-1 Scm^-1 because of large Coulomb repulsion between the electrons and small molecular interactions.

The collaborative work with teams led by Professors Youichi Murakami and Reiji Kumai at the Institute of Materials Structure Science, KEK, and Associate Scientist Akiko Nakao at the Comprehensive Research Organization for Science and Society (CROSS) showed the newly developed, highly conductive organic single-component material is composed of high symmetric molecular units and are linked by strong hydrogen bonds to form two-dimensional conductive layers.

Organic materials are generally soluble and therefore can be applied to printed electronics. Therefore, the use of these materials as next-generation organic electronic materials, for example, for single-component organic wiring, is anticipated.
The results are published in Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2352.

Figure:
Structure of the molecular unit and the metallic state in the purely organic single-component conductor. The purely organic single-component conductor developed by Mori’s group with the world record conductivity at room temperature (19 Scm^-1) is composed of the electrically neutral and symmetric molecular units, where the charge is widely delocalized. The assembled units construct the two-dimensional conducting layers which afford the metallic state under the lowest pressure of around 10 k atm