Preface

Book chapter, 2016

Since the first visionary publications about the concepts of singlemolecule electronics came out about 40 years ago, the research field has evolved into a truly interdisciplinary effort attracting contributors from various disciplines such as synthetic chemistry, theoretical chemistry and physics, experimental physics, and electronic engineering. Although great progress in both experimental realizations and theoretical understanding of single-molecule devices has been made, making it possible (to some extent) to predict and design molecular electronic components with tailored properties is still a challenge and still many steps are to be taken to overcome them before we will see widespread use of computing devices based on single molecules.