Conductivity measurement of insulated molecular wire formed by molecular nanotube and polyaniline

A new series of nanotubes synthesized from α-cyclodextrin (molecular nanotube) form an inclusion complex with polyaniline, a conducting polymer. This inclusion complex can be considered to be an insulated molecular wire (IMW). In this study, we investigated the conductivity of this insulated molecular wire by using narrow-gap (150 nm) electrodes fabricated by a scanning-probe nanofabrication technique. The IMW, on doping, showed nearly ohmic I-V characteristics, and the conductivity was estimated to be 4 × 10−2 S/cm.