Advances in Molecular Electronics: A Brief Review

The field of molecular electronics, also known as moletronics, deals with the assembly of molecular electronic components using molecules as the building blocks. It is an interdisciplinary field that includes physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Moletronics mainly deals with the reduction of size of silicon components. Novel research has been performed in developing electrical-equivalent molecular components. Moletronics has established its influence in electronic and photonic applications, such as conducting polymers, photochromics, organic superconductors, electrochromics, and many more. Since there is a need to reduce the size of the silicon chip, attaining such technology at the molecular level is essential. Although the experimental verification and modeling of molecular devices present a daunting task, vital breakthroughs have been achieved in this field. This article combines an overview of various molecular components, such as molecular transistors, diodes, capacitors, wires, and insulators, with a discussion of the potential applications of different molecules suitable for such components. We emphasize future developments and provide a brief review of different achievements that have been made regarding graphene-based molecular devices.