Influence of conformation on electron transport properties of oligophenyleneimine molecular wires

We propose molecular wires based on oligophenyleneimine (OPI) sandwiched between two gold electrodes. The electron transport properties of molecular wires attached to side groups are investigated using steady-state theoretical model and density functional theory by using GAUSSIAN 09 software. We investigate the influence of the side group and torsion angle on the electronic properties of molecular wires. We calculate the spatial distribution of the frontier orbitals, energy gap, transmission probability and the current rectifying ratio for OPI, OPI-pyridine, OPI-pyrazine, OPI-thiophene and OPI-thiazole. The transmission spectra change remarkably depending on the type of side group and torsion angle. The current rectifying ratio will increase by increasing the difference between torsion angles depending on the type of side group. That means the OPI-side group can be employed in molecular electronics.