Organic materials exhibiting metallic behavior are promising for numerous applications ranging from printed nanocircuits to large area electronics. However, the optimization of electronic conduction in organic metals such as charge-transfer salts or doped conjugated polymers requires high crystallinity, which is detrimental to their processability. To overcome this problem, the combination of the electronic properties of metal-like materials with the mechanical properties of soft self-assembled systems is attractive but necessitates the absence of structural defects in a regular lattice. Here we describe a one-dimensional supramolecular polymer in which photoinduced through-space charge-transfer complexes lead to highly coherent domains with delocalized electronic states displaying metallic behavior. We also reveal that diffusion of supramolecular polarons in the nanowires repairs structural defects thereby improving their conduction. The ability to access metallic properties from mendable self-assemblies extends the current understanding of both fields and opens a wide range of processing techniques for applications in organic electronics.
Gaining control over supramolecular polymerization mechanisms is of high fundamental interest to understand self‐assembly and self‐organization processes at the nanoscale. It is also expected to significantly impact the design and improve the efficiency of advanced materials and devices. Up to now, supramolecular polymerization has been shown to take place from unimers in solution, mainly by variations of temperature or of concentration. Reported here is that supramolecular nucleation‐growth of triarylamine monomers can be triggered by electrochemistry in various solvents. The involved mechanism offers new opportunities to precisely address in space and time the nucleation of supramolecular polymers at an electrode. To illustrate the potential of this methodology, supramolecular nanowires are grown an oriented over several tens of micrometers between different types of commercially available electrodes submitted to a single DC electric field, reaching a precision unprecedented in the literature.
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