NEWS

Saki Matsumoto, a first-year graduate student in the Department of Arts and Sciences majoring in Pure and Applied Sciences, won the Best Poster Presentation award for her presentation at the International Symposium on Organic Molecular Electronics held from May 18 (Wednesday) to 20 (Friday) at Niigata University. The title of her presentation was "Metal-Specific Dependence of Selective Metal-Vapor Deposition/Modulation -Toward Organic Device Applications-"
　The organic molecule diarylethene changes structure when exposed to ultraviolet rays, and changes from colorless to colored. When exposed to visible light, it returns to its original colorless state. Researchers at the Molecular Nano-Optics Laboratory became the first in the world to discover a phenomenon they named “selective metal-vapor deposition.” They observed that when metal vapor is deposited on a diarylethene membrane on the surface of a substrate, the deposit changes its status between colored and colorless They have been researching this phenomenon ever since. Selective metal-vapor deposition occurs with some metals such as magnesium, but not with other metals such as silver, and it was previously unknown why different metals have different reactions. Ms. Matsumoto, a researcher in the laboratory, investigated factors that make certain metals deposit more to these molecules, and found that metals with a higher vapor pressure did not deposit as easily. She hopes that use of this mechanism could enable more fine-tuned recording and deletion of semiconductor memory data.