Insulator-to-metal-like transition in thin films of a biological metal-organic framework

Pooja Sindhu, K. S. Ananthram, Anil Jain, Kartick Tarafder and Nirmalya Ballav ()
Additional contact information
Pooja Sindhu: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research
K. S. Ananthram: National Institute of Technology Karnataka
Anil Jain: Solid State Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
Kartick Tarafder: National Institute of Technology Karnataka
Nirmalya Ballav: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Temperature-induced insulator-to-metal transitions (IMTs) where the electrical resistivity can be altered by over tens of orders of magnitude are most often accompanied by structural phase transition in the system. Here, we demonstrate an insulator-to-metal-like transition (IMLT) at 333 K in thin films of a biological metal-organic framework (bio-MOF) which was generated upon an extended coordination of the cystine (dimer of amino acid cysteine) ligand with cupric ion (spin-1/2 system) – without appreciable change in the structure. Bio-MOFs are crystalline porous solids and a subclass of conventional MOFs where physiological functionalities of bio-molecular ligands along with the structural diversity can primarily be utilized for various biomedical applications. MOFs are usually electrical insulators (so as our expectation with bio-MOFs) and can be bestowed with reasonable electrical conductivity by the design. This discovery of electronically driven IMLT opens new opportunities for bio-MOFs, to emerge as strongly correlated reticular materials with thin film device functionalities.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38434-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-38434-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38434-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().