Cooling molecular electronic junctions by AC current

Abstract

Electronic current flowing in a molecular electronic junction dissipates significant amounts of energy to vibrational degrees of freedom, straining and rupturing chemical bonds and often quickly destroying the integrity of the molecular device. The infamous mechanical instability of molecular electronic junctions critically limits performance, lifespan, and raises questions as to the technological viability of single-molecule electronics. Here we propose a practical scheme for cooling the molecular vibrational temperature via application of an AC voltage over a large, static operational DC voltage bias. Using nonequilibrium Green's functions, we computed the viscosity and diffusion coefficient experienced by nuclei surrounded by a nonequilibrium "sea" of periodically driven, current-carrying electrons. The effective molecular junction temperature is deduced by balancing the viscosity and diffusion coefficients. Our calculations show the opportunity of achieving in excess of 40\% cooling of the molecular junction temperature while maintaining the same average current.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• First-passage time theory of activated rate chemical processes in electronic molecular junctions
• Floquet driven frictional effects
• Quantum transport in driven systems with vibrations: Floquet nonequilibrium Green's functions and the GD approximation
• Emergence of negative viscosities and colored noise under current-driven Ehrenfest molecular dynamics
• A physically realizable molecular motor driven by the Landauer blowtorch effect