Here we report on the functionalization of alkyne-terminated alkyl monolayers on highly doped Si(100) using "click" reactions to immobilize ferrocene derivatives. The reaction of hydrogen-terminated silicon surfaces with a diyne species was shown to afford very robust functional surfaces where the oxidation of the underlying substrate was negligible. Detailed characterization using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray reflectometry, and cyclic voltammetry demonstrated that the surface acetylenes had reacted in moderate yield to give surfaces exposing ferrocene moieties. Upon extensive exposure of the redox-active architecture to oxidative environments during preparative and characterization steps, no evidence of SiOx contaminants was shown for derivatized SAMs prepared from single-component 1,8-nonadiyne, fully acetylenylated, monolayers. An analysis of the redox behavior of the prepared Si(100) electrodes based on relevant parameters such as peak splitting and position and shape of the reduction/oxidation waves depicted a well-behaved redox architecture whose spectroscopic and electrochemical properties were not significantly altered even after prolonged cycling in aqueous media between -100 and 800 mV versus Ag|AgCl. The reported strategy represents an experimentally simple approach for the preparation of silicon-based electrodes where, in addition to close-to-ideal redox behavior, remarkable electrode stability can be achieved. Both the presence of a distal alkyne moiety and temperatures of formation above 100 degrees C were required to achieve this surface stabilization.

The influence of the length of a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) linker on the electrochemical performance of electrode-linker-gold nanoparticle molecular constructs is investigated. Electrodes were first modified with amino-1-alkanethiols of four different lengths (C=2, 6, 8, and 11). The SAM showed progressively greater blocking ability to ruthenium hexamine as the length of the alkyl chain increased to the point where no significant Faradaic peak was observed for the amino-1-undecanethiol SAM. Upon the attachment of gold nanoparticles, distinct Faradaic electrochemistry of the ruthenium hexamine was observed for all four length SAMs with the electrochemistry being similar to that observed on a bare electrode. The charge transfer resistance to this Faradaic process was observed to be insensitive to the length of the intervening SAM, indicating it is electron transfer between the redox species and the nanoparticles, rather than tunneling across the SAM, which is the rate-limiting step. Some comments on the mechanism of charge transfer are provided. When forming multilayers of the linker-nanoparticle constructs, fabricated in a stepwise manner, whenever the distal species was the SAM the Faradaic process was blocked and whenever it was the nanoparticle a distinct Faradaic process was observed. With up to five layers of linker-nanoparticles, there was little increase in charge transfer resistance and again the charge transfer resistance was insensitive to the length of the linker.

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The influence of the length of the carbon chain of a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) on gold electrodes on the electrochemical performance of carbon nanotube arrays attached to the SAM was explored. Four electrode constructs were assessed, all of which were modified with four different lengths (C2−C11) of amine-terminated alkanethiols. The four constructs were gold electrodes modified (1) with SAMs alone, (2) with carbon nanotubes randomly dispersed onto the SAM-modified electrodes by drop coating, (3) with vertically aligned carbon nanotubes formed by self-assembly onto the SAMs, and (4) with vertically aligned nanotubes with ferrocene attached to the nanotubes. By use of ruthenium hexaammine as a redox probe, the attachment of the carbon nanotubes to the SAM, either randomly dispersed or aligned, enabled electrochemistry to be observed at SAMs that were passivating prior to attachment of the nanotubes. The electrochemistry decayed exponentially with methylene chain length as expected but with a surprisingly low attenuation factor (β value) for the nanotube-modified surfaces. For randomly dispersed nanotubes, the β value was 0.27 per -CH2- (s = 0.04, n = 4), and for the vertically aligned nanotubes, 0.66 per -CH2- (s = 0.04, n = 4). A similar β value of 0.62 per -CH2- for vertically aligned nanotubes with ferrocene attached provided good evidence that the results with ruthenium hexaammine were due to tunneling through the SAM rather than electrochemistry proceeding via defects in the SAM or the nanotubes penetrating the SAM to the underlying electrode.