Organometallic manganese complexes as scaffolds for potential molecular wires

This article reviews recent work in the area of organomanganese chemistry designing organometallic based molecular wires for potential applications in molecular electronics utilising the bottom-up approach. The field of molecular electronics has recently received much attention in the pursuit of continued miniaturization of electronics. Molecular wires that can allow a through-bridge exchange of an electron/electron hole between its remote ends/terminal groups are the basic motifs of single electron devices. Our recent work in this field has been the design and development of transition-metal complexes with a special emphasis on the half sandwich dinuclear manganese complexes and the bis dmpe dinuclear MnII/MnII. In this review, we would like to highlight the importance of the nature of the transition metal and their significant effect on the redox process, which is of paramount importance for the design of systems that could be ultimately wired into circuits for various applications. © The Royal Society of Chemistry.