158 research outputs found
Current-Driven Conformational Changes, Charging and Negative Differential Resistance in Molecular Wires
We introduce a theoretical approach based on scattering theory and total
energy methods that treats transport non-linearities, conformational changes
and charging effects in molecular wires in a unified way. We apply this
approach to molecular wires consisting of chain molecules with different
electronic and structural properties bonded to metal contacts. We show that
non-linear transport in all of these systems can be understood in terms of a
single physical mechanism and predict that negative differential resistance at
high bias should be a generic property of such molecular wires.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Quantum Conductance and Electronic Properties of Lower Diamondoid Molecules and Derivatives
Diamondoids and their derivatives have found major applications as templates
and as molecular building blocks in nanotechnology. Applying ab initio method,
we calculated the quantum conductance and the essential electronic properties
of two lower diamondoids (adamantane and diamantane) and three of their
important derivatives (amantadine, memantine and rimantadine). We also studies
two artificial molecules that are built by substituting one hydrogen ion with
one sodium ion in both adamantane and diamantane molecules. Most of our results
are based on an infinite Au two-probe system constructed by ATK and VNL
software, which comprise TRANSTA-C package. By changing various system
structures and molecule orientations in linear Au and 2 by 2 Au probe systems,
we found that although the conductance of adamantane and diamantane are very
small, the derivatives of the lower diamondoids have considerable conductance
at specific orientations and also showed interesting electronic properties. The
quantum conductance of such molecules will change significantly by changing the
orientations of the molecules, which approves that residues like nitrogen and
sodium atoms have great effects on the conductance and electronic properties of
single molecule. There are obvious peaks near Fermi energy in the transmission
spectrums of artificial molecules, indicating the plateaus in I-V
characteristics of such molecules
Antiresonances in Molecular Wires
We present analytic and numerical studies based on Landauer theory of
conductance antiresonances of molecular wires. Our analytic treatment is a
solution of the Lippmann-Schwinger equation for the wire that includes the
effects of the non-orthogonality of the atomic orbitals on different atoms
exactly. The problem of non-orthogonality is treated by solving the transport
problem in a new Hilbert space which is spanned by an orthogonal basis. An
expression is derived for the energies at which antiresonances should occur for
a molecular wire connected to a pair of single-channel 1D leads. From this
expression we identify two distinct mechanisms that give rise to antiresonances
under different circumstances. The exact treatment of non-orthogonality in the
theory is found to be necessary to obtain reliable results. Our numerical
simulations extend this work to multichannel leads and to molecular wires
connected to 3D metallic nanocontacts. They demonstrate that our analytic
results also provide a good description of these more complicated systems
provided that certain well-defined conditions are met. These calculations
suggest that antiresonances should be experimentally observable in the
differential conductance of molecular wires of certain types.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure
Electron Standing Wave Formation in Atomic Wires
Using the Landauer formulation of transport theory and tight binding models
of the electronic structure, we study electron transport through atomic wires
that form 1D constrictions between pairs of metallic nano-contacts. Our results
are interpreted in terms of electron standing waves formed in the atomic wires
due to interference of electron waves reflected at the ends of the atomic
constrictions. We explore the influence of the chemistry of the atomic
wire-metal contact interfaces on these standing waves and the associated
transport resonances by considering two types of atomic wires: gold wires
attached to gold contacts and carbon wires attached to gold contacts. We find
that the conductance of the gold wires is roughly for the
wire lengths studied, in agreement with experiments. By contrast, for the
carbon wires the conductance is found to oscillate strongly as the number of
atoms in the wire varies, the odd numbered chains being more conductive than
the even numbered ones, in agreement with previous theoretical work that was
based on a different model of the carbon wire and metal contacts.Comment: 14 pages, includes 6 figure
Charging induced asymmetry in molecular conductors
We investigate the origin of asymmetry in various measured current-voltage
(I-V) characteristics of molecules with no inherent spatial asymmetry, with
particular focus on a recent break junction measurement. We argue that such
asymmetry arises due to unequal coupling with the contacts and a consequent
difference in charging effects, which can only be captured in a self-consistent
model for molecular conduction. The direction of the asymmetry depends on the
sign of the majority carriers in the molecule. For conduction through highest
occupied molecular orbitals (i.e. HOMO or p-type conduction), the current is
smaller for positive voltage on the stronger contact, while for conduction
through lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals (i.e. LUMO or n-type conduction),
the sense of the asymmetry is reversed. Within an extended Huckel description
of the molecular chemistry and the contact microstructure (with two adjustable
parameters, the position of the Fermi energy and the sulphur-gold bond length),
an appropriate description of Poisson's equation, and a self-consistently
coupled non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) description of transport, we
achieve good agreement between theoretical and experimental I-V
characteristics, both in shape as well as overall magnitude.Comment: length of the paper has been extended (4 pages to 6 pages), two new
figures have been added (3 figures to 5 figures), has been accepted for PR
Designability of alpha-helical Proteins
A typical protein structure is a compact packing of connected alpha-helices
and/or beta-strands. We have developed a method for generating the ensemble of
compact structures a given set of helices and strands can form. The method is
tested on structures composed of four alpha-helices connected by short turns.
All such natural four-helix bundles that are connected by short turns seen in
nature are reproduced to closer than 3.6 Angstroms per residue within the
ensemble. Since structures with no natural counterpart may be targets for ab
initio structure design, the designability of each structure in the ensemble --
defined as the number of sequences with that structure as their lowest energy
state -- is evaluated using a hydrophobic energy. For the case of four
alpha-helices, a small set of highly designable structures emerges, most of
which have an analog among the known four-helix fold families, however several
novel packings and topologies are identified.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, to appear in PNA
Theory for transport through a single magnetic molecule: Endohedral N@C60
We consider transport through a single N@C60 molecule, weakly coupled to
metallic leads. Employing a density-matrix formalism we derive rate equations
for the occupation probabilities of many-particle states of the molecule. We
calculate the current-voltage characteristics and the differential conductance
for N@C60 in a break junction. Our results reveal Coulomb-blockade behavior as
well as a fine structure of the Coulomb-blockade peaks due to the exchange
coupling of the C60 spin to the spin of the encapsulated nitrogen atom.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, v2: version as publishe
Control of quantum interference in molecular junctions: Understanding the origin of Fano and anti- resonances
We investigate within a coarse-grained model the conditions leading to the
appearance of Fano resonances or anti-resonances in the conductance spectrum of
a generic molecular junction with a side group (T-junction). By introducing a
simple graphical representation (parabolic diagram), we can easily visualize
the relation between the different electronic parameters determining the
regimes where Fano resonances or anti-resonances in the low-energy conductance
spectrum can be expected. The results obtained within the coarse-grained model
are validated using density-functional based quantum transport calculations in
realistic T-shaped molecular junctions.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Phonon-assisted resonant tunneling through a triple-quantum-dot: a phonon-signal detector
We study the effect of electron-phonon interaction on current and
zero-frequency shot noise in resonant tunneling through a series
triple-quantum-dot coupling to a local phonon mode by means of a
nonperturbative mapping technique along with the Green function formulation. By
fixing the energy difference between the first two quantum dots to be equal to
phonon frequency and sweeping the level of the third quantum dot, we find a
largely enhanced current spectrum due to phonon effect, and in particular we
predict current peaks corresponding to phonon-absorption and -emission assisted
resonant tunneling processes, which shows that this system can be acted as a
sensitive phonon-signal detector or as a cascade phonon generator.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure
Real space finite difference method for conductance calculations
We present a general method for calculating coherent electronic transport in
quantum wires and tunnel junctions. It is based upon a real space high order
finite difference representation of the single particle Hamiltonian and wave
functions. Landauer's formula is used to express the conductance as a
scattering problem. Dividing space into a scattering region and left and right
ideal electrode regions, this problem is solved by wave function matching (WFM)
in the boundary zones connecting these regions. The method is tested on a model
tunnel junction and applied to sodium atomic wires. In particular, we show that
using a high order finite difference approximation of the kinetic energy
operator leads to a high accuracy at moderate computational costs.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure
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