Rational Design of Metal-organic Electronic Devices: a Computational Perspective

Organic and organometallic electronic materials continue to attract considerable attention among researchers due to their cost effectiveness, high flexibility, low temperature processing conditions and the continuous emergence of new semiconducting materials with tailored electronic properties. In addition, organic semiconductors can be used in a variety of important technological devices such as solar cells, field-effect transistors (FETs), flash memory, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, light emitting diodes (LEDs), etc. However, organic materials have thus far not achieved the reliability and carrier mobility obtainable with inorganic silicon-based devices. Hence, there is a need for finding alternative electronic materials other than organic semiconductors to overcome the problems of inferior stability and performance. In this dissertation, I research the development of new transition metal based electronic materials which due to the presence of metal-metal, metal-?, and ?-? interactions may give rise to superior electronic and chemical properties versus their organic counterparts. Specifically, I performed computational modeling studies on platinum based charge transfer complexes and d10 cyclo-[M(?-L)]3 trimers (M = Ag, Au and L = monoanionic bidentate bridging (C/N~C/N) ligand). The research done is aimed to guide experimental chemists to make rational choices of metals, ligands, substituents in synthesizing novel organometallic electronic materials. Furthermore, the calculations presented here propose novel ways to tune the geometric, electronic, spectroscopic, and conduction properties in semiconducting materials. In addition to novel material development, electronic device performance can be improved by making a judicious choice of device components. I have studied the interfaces of a p-type metal-organic semiconductor viz cyclo-[Au(µ-Pz)]3 trimer with metal electrodes at atomic and surface levels. This work was aimed to guide the device engineers to choose the appropriate metal electrodes considering the chemical interactions at the interface. Additionally, the calculations performed on the interfaces provided valuable insight into binding energies, charge redistribution, change in the energy levels, dipole formation, etc., which are important parameters to consider while fabricating an electronic device. The research described in this dissertation highlights the application of unique computational modeling methods at different levels of theory to guide the experimental chemists and device engineers toward a rational design of transition metal based electronic devices with low cost and high performance.