Molecular electronics represent the cutting-edge and interdisciplinary effort on the future miniaturization of electronic circuits. Benefiting from synthetic chemistry and theoretical insights, molecular circuit studies have promoted devices with increasingly complicated structures. Especially, the evolution of conductive backbones from simple chain-shape single-channel configurations to complex multi-channel architectures marks a pivotal progression. A comprehensive understanding of charge transport and conductance properties in multi-channel molecular devices is crucial for further developing molecular circuits. In this review, we provide an overview of conductance properties, categorizing the influence on conductance as either enhancement or suppression. The underlying mechanisms of conductance modulation are discussed as conductance enhancement attributed to factors of the quantum-interference-based superposition law, the charge-induced self-gating effect, and the facilitation of additional conductive channels through through-space transport; while the conductance suppression originates from the destructive quantum interference in saturated conductive channels and the "electron selective transport" feature within multi-channel structure exhibiting the channels converging on a phenyl group.
Keywords: conductance modulation; multi-channel; quantum interference; single-molecule conductance.
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