Charge-memory polaron effect in molecular junctions

Abstract

The charge-memory effect, bistability and switching between charged and neutral states of a molecular junction, as observed in recent STM experiments, is considered within a minimal polaron model. We show that in the case of strong electron-vibron interaction the rate of spontaneous quantum switching between charged and neutral states is exponentially suppressed at zero bias voltage but can be tuned through a wide range of finite switching timescales upon changing the bias. We further find that, while junctions with symmetric voltage drop give rise to random switching at finite bias, asymmetric junctions exhibit hysteretic behavior enabling controlled switching. Lifetimes and charge-voltage curves are calculated by the master equation method for weak coupling to the leads and at stronger coupling by the equation-of-motion method for nonequilibrium Green functions.

4 pages, 5 figures, submitted

References in corpus (17)

• Time-dependent transport in interacting and non-interacting mesoscopic systems
• Molecular Transport Junctions: Vibrational Effects
• Franck-Condon blockade and giant Fano factors in transport through single molecules
• Phonon effects in molecular transistors: Quantum and classical treatment
• Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy in molecular junctions: Peaks and dips
• Vibrational sidebands and dissipative tunneling in molecular transistors
• Inelastic scattering and local heating in atomic gold wires
• Resonant inelastic tunneling in molecular junctions
• Tuning the conductance of a molecular switch
• Tunneling broadening of vibrational sidebands in molecular transistors
• Current-induced nonequilibrium vibrations in single-molecule devices
• Current hysteresis and memory effect in a molecular quantum dot with strong electron-vibron interaction
• Semiclassical analysis of the Nonequilibrium Local Polaron
• Nonequilibrium resonant spectroscopy of molecular vibrons
• Inelastic resonant tunneling through single molecules and quantum dots: spectrum modification due to nonequilibrium effects
• Charge-memory effect in a polaron model: equation-of-motion method for Green functions
• Modelling of inelastic effects in molecular electronics

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Numerically exact, time-dependent treatment of vibrationally coupled electron transport in single-molecule junctions
• Gating a single-molecule transistor with individual atoms
• Resonant vibrations, peak broadening and noise in single molecule contacts: beyond the resonant tunnelling picture
• Green function techniques in the treatment of quantum transport at the molecular scale
• Molecular switch controlled by pulsed bias voltages
• Transient dynamics of a molecular quantum dot with a vibrational degree of freedom
• Quantum transport through STM-lifted single PTCDA molecules
• Theory of STM junctions for π-conjugated molecules on thin insulating films
• First Principles Quantum Transport with Electron-vibration Interactions: A Maximally Localized Wannier Function Approach
• Superconducting coupler with exponentially large on-off ratio
• Negative differential conductance in molecular junctions: an overview of experiment and theory
• Single-spin polaron memory effect
• Vibration induced memory effects and switching in ac-driven molecular nanojunctions
• Interference and shot noise in a degenerate Anderson-Holstein model
• Randomly Fluctuating Potential Controlled Multistable Resonant Tunneling Current through a Quantum Dot
• Ab initio vibrations in nonequilibrium nanowires