For several years experts have been working to comprehend how to work with very small electronic equipment. In the up and coming field of Nano-science and nano-technologies it is essential for scientists to control the structure and bonding of molecules used in manufacturing small scale electronic components for products like computers.

In Liverpool, scientists have created a pentacene, which is the union of a single gold atom and a single organic molecule. They succeeded in binding the atom to the pentacene and took images of rearrangements of the electrons contributing to the formation of the chemical bond.

The scientists chose the pentacene because it is a special kind of molecule with specific qualities useful in molecular electronics. The gold atom is a metal atom that attracts an extra electron to create the pentacene.

Liverpool's University Chemistry Professor, Mats Persson said, "This new experiment allows us to control the arrangement and shape of chemical bonds and to gain new insight into making contact with a single molecule with potential importance for molecular electronics. There will come a time when electronic material will become so small that we will need to control the structure down to the atomic scale and the chemical bonds between single molecules and atoms.”

"The atomic scale control of single-molecule chemistry in this experiment opens up new perspectives in the emerging field of molecular electronics, particularly in connecting organic molecules with electronic components. This could be important in creating electronics for future computers which are faster, smaller and have less power consumption."

This nanotechnology research at the University of Liverpool has been done in collaboration with IBM Zurich Research Lab, Tampere University of Technology and Chalmers University of Technology.