Molecular wires are the simplest single-molecule electronic devices, and they can be viewed as the elementary components of bulk organic semiconductors. Molecular wire rings exhibit fundamentally different behaviour from straight molecular wires, leading to the phenomenon of aromaticity. This lecture will present the synthesis and investigation of various linear and cyclic molecular wires, including polyynes, cyclocarbons and porphyrin nanobelts, with an emphasis on understanding electronic delocalisation in long chains and large rings.
