Molecular transport junctions: vibrational effects

By Michael Galperin, Mark A. Ratner, Abraham Nitzan Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University School of Chemistry, T. O. S. University, Israel. 2006

541 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Transport of electrons in a single molecule junction is the simplest problem in the general subject area of molecular electronics. In the past few years, this area has been extended to probe beyond the simple tunnelling associated with large energy gaps between electrode Fermi level and molecular levels, to deal with smaller gaps, with near-resonance tunnelling and, particularly, with effects due to interaction of electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom. This overview is devoted to the theoretical and computational approaches that have been taken to understanding transport in molecular junctions when these vibronic interactions are involved. After a short experimental overview, and discussion of different test beds and measurements, we define a particular microscopic model Hamiltonian. That overall Hamiltonian can be used to discuss all of the phenomena dealt with subsequently. These include transition from coherent to incoherent transport as electron/vibration interaction increases in strength, inelastic electron tunnelling spectroscopy and its interpretation and measurement, affects of interelectronic repulsion treated at the Hubbard level, noise in molecular transport junctions, non-linear conductance phenomena, heating and heat conduction in molecular transport junctions and current-induced chemical reactions. In each of these areas, we use the same simple model Hamiltonian to analyse energetics and dynamics. While this overview does not attempt survey the literature exhaustively, it does provide appropriate references to the current literature (both experimental and theoretical). We also attempt to point out directions in which further research is required to answer cardinal questions concerning the behaviour and understanding of vibrational effects in molecular transport junctions.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/09a60470171a5536d93b53606ea04009bf15c6eb

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Gang Zhang
2. Baowen Li
3. Nianbei Li
4. Jie Ren
5. Lei Wang
6. Eric Pop
7. Alessandro Pecchia
8. P. Hänggi

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Gang Zhang
2. Baowen Li
3. Eric Pop
4. Alessandro Pecchia
5. P. Hänggi

In Materials Chemistry

1. Gang Zhang
2. Baowen Li
3. Eric Pop
4. Nianbei Li
5. Lei Wang
6. P. Hänggi
7. Jie Ren
8. Yong‐Wei Zhang

Citations in the corpus

• Colloquium : Phononics: Manipulating heat flow with electronic analogs and beyond (2011, background): “In clear contrast to the realm of electron shuttling (Galperin et al., 2007; Hänggi and Marchesoni, 2009; Hänggi et al., 2002; Joachim and Ratner, 2005; Remacle et al., 2005), however, this aspect of shuttling quantum heat is presently still at an initial stage, although expected to undergo increasi”
• Non-equilibrium Green's functions in density functional tight binding: method and applications (2008, background): “However, the great advantage of the Green’s function technique is that it can treat, within a unified mathematical framework, coherent and incoherent transport [15].”
• Energy dissipation and transport in nanoscale devices (2010, background): “[35] Galperin, M.”