A Generic Model for Current Collapse in Spin Blockaded Transport

Abstract

A decrease in current with increasing voltage, often referred to as negative differential resistance (NDR), has been observed in many electronic devices and can usually be understood within a one-electron picture. However, NDR has recently been reported in nanoscale devices with large single-electron charging energies which require a many-electron picture in Fock space. This paper presents a generic model in this transport regime leading to a simple criterion for the conditions required to observe NDR and shows that this model describes the recent observation of multiple NDR's in Spin Blockaded transport through weakly coupled-double quantum dots quite well. This model shows clearly how a delicate interplay of orbital energy offset, delocalization and Coulomb interaction lead to the observed NDR under the right conditions, and also aids in obtaining a good match with experimentally observed features. We believe the basic model could be useful in understanding other experiments in this transport regime as well.

10 pages, 10 figures. to appear in Phys Rev B

References in corpus (3)

• Rate equations for Coulomb blockade with ferromagnetic leads
• Pauli spin blockade in weakly coupled quantum dots
• Theory for transport through a single magnetic molecule: Endohedral N@C60

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Effects of different geometries on the conductance, shot noise and tunnel magnetoresistance of double quantum dots
• Negative differential resistance in molecular junctions: application to graphene ribbon junctions
• Background charges and quantum effects in quantum dots transport spectroscopy
• Negative differential resistance in nanoscale transport in the Coulomb blockade
• Rectification by charging -- the physics of contact-induced current asymmetry in molecular conductors
• Modeling electrostatic and quantum detection of molecules
• Negative Differential Spin Conductance by Population Switching