The Innovative Electronics Manufacturing Research Centre's (IeMRC) final event of the year was held in collaboration with the Centre for Advanced Materials and Devices (CAFMaD) at Technium CAST in Bangor November 24, 2009 and the subject matter broadly covered the area of novel electronic materials. The workshop was opened by Gary Reed who introduced CAFMAD, one of four key research centres set up in Wales and based jointly in Aberystwyth and Bangor. Research areas covered by CAFMaD included organic conductors and molecular electronics, sensors and devices, extreme materials and characterisation and modelling.

Presenters Martin Goosey (left) and Geoff Ashwell (right).

Martin Goosey, Industrial Director of the leMRC, then gave an introduction to organization and its current status. IeMRC was currently preparing for the start of its second five year period of funding and it was in the middle of reviewing and selecting projects that would be funded from March 2010. IeMRC's Vision Statement was presented and its engagement with the UK's electronics industry highlighted. Examples of materials related research that had been supported during the first five years of activity were highlighted: A project based at Birmingham University on high-resolution, high-sensitivity chemically-amplified e-beam resists and the work carried out at Brunel University on printed electronic interconnects, devices and battery structures. Martin concluded by inviting attendees to engage with the IeMRC and highlighted the ways in which this could be possible.

The first technical presentation, "Single Molecule Electronics," was given by Geoff Ashwell of CAFMaD, Bangor. In this presentation Ashwell detailed work on the synthesis of molecular wires and the control of their electrical properties via modification of molecular structure. The structure of the molecular wires was detailed and their synthesis could require an eleven-stage process. The synthesis had been monitored using quartz microbalance and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy techniques.

Electrical properties of the molecules could be controlled by modifying their actual structures during their synthesis. Individual molecules could, for example, be changed from rectifying to non-rectifying by changing the end group terminations. Examples of the synthesis of a rectifying molecule were then described.

Having synthesised the appropriate molecules, they could then be inserted into various device structures and one such example was described which was essentially a molecular necklace around a silicon nitride insulator layer. Work had been carried out in collaboration with QinetiQ, which had also developed various device structures where the molecules were deposited between silicon electrodes that were separated by a 7 nm silicon dioxide insulating layer. The molecule used in this later work had been synthesised by Durham University. Theoretical calculations of currents aligned well with the measured results. This in-situ synthesis method for molecular wires had given the highest recorded rectification ratio from a molecular wire and the research had enabled the first examples of molecules inserted into nano-gap silicon devices. Future work would be undertaken to develop the first single molecule devices.