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 10(4)Sm(-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 (similar to 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.