Development of new methodologies for the modification of solid surfaces and the synthesis of metal sulfide materials

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The immobilization of organic and bioorganic molecules on solid surfaces is a central objective in nanotechnology and microarray technologies. A parallel chemistry can be used to synthesize metal-based materials of various shapes and sizes, which present a wide range of applications in many areas including solar energy, energy storage, catalysis, etc. Advances in these important areas are directly related to the development of new general chemical pathways for the synthesis of metal based materials, the modification of solid surfaces and the molecular manipulation and control of surface adsorbates. My long-term objective is the development of molecular electronic devices for use in sensing and energy harvesting and storage applications. My initial thrust concerns two important aspects of the chemistry necessary to make this a realizable technology; (i) the development of new approaches for the efficient modification of conducting and semiconducting surfaces with organic molecules, and (ii) the development of new simple, general, and more environmentally friendly methodologies for the synthesis of metal sulfide materials. While most experimental conditions for SAM preparation yield reproducible organic interfaces with specific desirable functionalities that are acceptable for some applications, other fundamental properties need still to be further studied and optimized including corrosion and electrochemical properties. This is intrinsically related to the development of SAMs with lower defects and increased order. On the other hand, the organic modification of oxide-free Si surfaces offering a direct combination of molecular materials and solid-state semiconductor structures and is then an attractive approach toward technologically useful and molecularly tunable thin films.****For the first aspect, both conducting (Au, Ag, Cu) as well as semiconducting (Si) surfaces will be investigated. Rigorous characterization of the modified surfaces and investigation of the electrochemical properties of the formed films will be performed. The electrochemical manipulation of adsorbates on a highly local level will be investigated.****For the second aspect, a wide variety of new sulfur precursors will be used to develop new methods for the synthesis of metal sulfide materials. These methods will be designed in a way to control the characteristics of these materials, on which their physical properties depend, such as composition, size and shape. Most of the present methods suffer from various drawbacks including the use ofcomplex experimental set-up, very high temperature, and toxic reagents. Our approach consists of developing methods to overcome these limitations.****The idea of this proposal is to use my experience in ET based reactions and electrochemistry to develop chemical solutions to the issues of surface derivatization and local manipulation and metal based materials synthesis.***