Passing current through touching molecules

Abstract

The charge flow from a single C60 molecule to another one has been probed. The conformation and electronic states of both molecules on the contacting electrodes have been characterized using a cryogenic scanning tunneling microscope. While the contact conductance of a single molecule between two Cu electrodes can vary up to a factor of three depending on electrode geometry, the conductance of the C60-C60 contact is consistently lower by two orders of magnitude. First-principles transport calculations reproduce the experimental results, allow a determination of the actual C60-C60 distances, and identify the essential role of the intermolecular link in bi- and trimolecular chains.

4 pages, 4 figures (+ suppl. material 2 pages, 1 figure)

References in corpus (7)

• The SIESTA method for ab initio order-N materials simulation
• Efficient index handling of multidimensional periodic boundary conditions
• Density functional method for nonequilibrium electron transport
• Transmission eigenchannels from non-equilibrium Green's functions
• Atom Transfer and Single-Adatom Contacts
• Controlled Contact to a C60 Molecule
• First-Principles Study on Electron-Conduction Properties of C${}_{60}$ Chains

Cited by in corpus (26)

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• Towards a full ab initio theory of strong electronic correlations in nanoscale devices
• Thermal conductance and thermoelectric figure of merit of C${}_{60}$-based single-molecule junctions: electrons, phonons, and photons
• Critical assessment of the evidence for striped nanoparticles
• Shifting the Voltage Drop in Electron Transport through a Single Molecule
• Transport properties of individual C60-molecules
• Engineering Negative Differential Conductance with the Cu(111) Surface State
• Charge transport in doped zigzag phosphorene nanoribbons
• Spin dependent transmission of Nickelocene-Cu contacts probed with shot noise
• Imaging isodensity contours of molecular states with STM
• Phosphorene as a nanoelectromechanical material
• Pulling and Stretching a Molecular Wire to Tune its Conductance
• Low Rank Approximation Method for Efficient Green's Function Calculation of Dissipative Quantum Transport
• Fluorescent single-molecule STM probe
• Scanning Tunneling Microscope Operating as a Spin-diode
• Negative Differential Resistance in Spin-Crossover Molecular Devices
• Nonequilibrium electron-vibration coupling and conductance fluctuations in a C60-junction
• Prediction of ultra-high ON/OFF ratio nanoelectromechanical switching from covalently-bound C60 chains
• Evidence for temporary and local transition of sp2 graphite-type to sp3 diamond-type bonding induced by the tip of an atomic force microscope
• Strong Spin-Filtering and Spin-Valve Effects in a Molecular V-C60-V Contact
• Interactions between two C60 molecules measured by scanning probe microscopies
• One dimensional chains of nickelocene fragments on Au(111)
• First-principles study on atomic configuration of electron-beam irradiated C${}_{60}$ clusters