ABSTRACT
Organic compounds are traditionally considered to be those containing the element carbon, often in association with nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. Most organic solids at room temperature are insulators, but what must have intrigued some early chemists was the fact that a few such compounds have a metal-like appearance, a “metallic luster,” a “glistening silvery sheen,” or “coppery luster,” to quote some early descriptions of such complex, organic compounds. The enhanced conductivity of the perylene-bromine complex results from a transfer of charge from one molecular substituent to another, with the formation of a donor-acceptor complex. Future developments in this field will surely be dominated by issues relating to the limited dimensionality of the compounds so often found in the organics. Systems that are of limited dimensionality in the sense just defined are found to be more sensitive to certain instabilities than are systems with comparable coupling in all three dimensions.
