Intrinsic electrical conductivity of nanostructured metal-organic polymer chains

One-dimensional conductive polymers are attractive materials because of their potential in flexible and transparent electronics. Despite years of research, on the macro- and nano-scale, structural disorder represents the major hurdle in achieving high conductivities. Here we report measurements of highly ordered metal-organic nanoribbons, whose intrinsic (defect-free) conductivity is found to be 104 S m−1, three orders of magnitude higher than that of our macroscopic crystals. This magnitude is preserved for distances as large as 300 nm. Above this length, the presence of structural defects (~ 0.5%) gives rise to an inter-fibre-mediated charge transport similar to that of macroscopic crystals. We provide the first direct experimental evidence of the gapless electronic structure predicted for these compounds. Our results postulate metal-organic molecular wires as good metallic interconnectors in nanodevices.