Simple and efficient way of speeding up transmission calculations with kk-point sampling

The transmissions as functions of energy are central for electron or phonon transport in the Landauer transport picture. We suggest a simple and computationally "cheap" post-processing scheme to interpolate transmission functions over $k$-points to get smooth well-converged average transmission functions. This is relevant for data obtained using typical "expensive" first principles calculations where the leads/electrodes are described by periodic boundary conditions. We show examples of transport in graphene structures where a speed-up of an order of magnitude is easily obtained.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Modeling inelastic phonon scattering in atomic- and molecular-wire junctions

Computationally inexpensive approximations describing electron-phonon scattering in molecular-scale conductors are derived from the non-equilibrium Green's function method. The accuracy is demonstrated with a first principles calculation on an atomic gold wire. Quantitative agreement between the full non-equilibrium Green's function calculation and the newly derived expressions is obtained while simplifying the computational burden by several orders of magnitude. In addition, analytical models provide intuitive understanding of the conductance including non-equilibrium heating and provide a convenient way of parameterizing the physics. This is exemplified by fitting the expressions to the experimentally observed conductances through both an atomic gold wire and a hydrogen molecule.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Strong Spin-Filtering and Spin-Valve Effects in a Molecular V-C60-V Contact

Motivated by the recent achievements in manipulation of C60 molecules in STM experiments, we study theoretically the structure and electronic properties of a C60 molecule in an STM-tunneljunction with a magnetic tip and magnetic adatom on a Cu(111) surface from first-principle calculations. For the case of V tip/adatom, we demonstrate how spin-coupling between the magnetic V atoms mediated by the C60 can be observed in the electronic transport, which display a strong spin-filtering effect, allowing mainly majority-spin electrons to pass(>95%). Moreover, we find a significant change in the conductance between parallel and anti-parallel spin polarizations in the junction (86%) which suggests that STM experiments should be able to characterize the magnetism and spin-coupling for these systems

Flexural phonon scattering induced by electrostatic gating in graphene

Graphene has an extremely high carrier mobility partly due to its planar mirror symmetry inhibiting scattering by the highly occupied acoustic flexural phonons. Electrostatic gating of a graphene device can break the planar mirror symmetry yielding a coupling mechanism to the flexural phonons. We examine the effect of the gate-induced one-phonon scattering on the mobility for several gate geometries and dielectric environments using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) and the Boltzmann equation. We demonstrate that this scattering mechanism can be a mobility-limiting factor, and show how the carrier density and temperature scaling of the mobility depends on the electrostatic environment. Our findings may explain the high deformation potential for in-plane acoustic phonons extracted from experiments and furthermore suggest a direct relation between device symmetry and resulting mobility.Comment: Accepted at Physical Review Letter

Current-induced atomic forces in gated graphene nanoconstrictions

Electronic current densities can reach extreme values in highly conducting nanostructures where constrictions limit current. For bias voltages on the 1 volt scale, the highly non-equilibrium situation can influence the electronic density between atoms, leading to significant inter-atomic forces. An easy interpretation of the non-equilibrium forces is currently not available. In this work, we present an ab-initio study based on density functional theory of bias-induced atomic forces in gated graphene nanoconstrictions consisting of junctions between graphene electrodes and graphene nano-ribbons in the presence of current. We find that current-induced bond-forces and bond-charges are correlated, while bond-forces are not simply correlated to bond-currents. We discuss, in particular, how the forces are related to induced charges and the electrostatic potential profile (voltage drop) across the junctions. For long current-carrying junctions we may separate the junction into a part with a voltage drop, and a part without voltage drop. The latter situation can be compared to a nano-ribbon in the presence of current using an ideal ballistic velocity-dependent occupation function. This shows how the combination of voltage drop and current give rise to the strongest current-induced forces in nanostructures.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Removing all periodic boundary conditions: Efficient non-equilibrium Green function calculations

We describe a method and its implementation for calculating electronic structure and electron transport without approximating the structure using periodic super-cells. This effectively removes spurious periodic images and interference effects. Our method is based on already established methods readily available in the non-equilibrium Green function formalism and allows for non-equilibrium transport. We present examples of a N defect in graphene, finite voltage bias transport in a point-contact to graphene, and a graphene-nanoribbon junction. This method is less costly, in terms of CPU-hours, than the super-cell approximation.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Light emission and finite frequency shot noise in molecular junctions: from tunneling to contact

Scanning tunneling microscope induced light emission from an atomic or molecular junction has been probed from the tunneling to contact regime in recent experiments. There, the intensity of the light emission shows strong correlation with the current/charge fluctuations at optical frequencies. We show that this is consistent with the established theory in the tunneling regime, by writing the finite-frequency shot noise as a sum of inelastic transitions between different electronic states. Based on this, we develop a practical scheme to perform calculations on realistic structures using Green's functions. The photon emission yields obtained re-produce the essential feature of the experiments.Comment: published version, Phys. Rev. B 88, 045413 (2013

Inelastic vibrational signals in electron transport across graphene nanoconstrictions

We present calculations of the inelastic vibrational signals in the electrical current through a graphene nanoconstriction. We find that the inelastic signals are only present when the Fermi-level position is tuned to electron transmission resonances, thus, providing a fingerprint which can link an electron transmission resonance to originate from the nanoconstriction. The calculations are based on a novel first-principles method which includes the phonon broadening due to coupling with phonons in the electrodes. We find that the signals are modified due to the strong coupling to the electrodes, however, still remain as robust fingerprints of the vibrations in the nanoconstriction. We investigate the effect of including the full self-consistent potential drop due to finite bias and gate doping on the calculations and find this to be of minor importance

Simple and efficient LCAO basis sets for the diffuse states in carbon nanostructures

We present a simple way to describe the lowest unoccupied diffuse states in carbon nanostructures in density functional theory (DFT) calculations using a minimal LCAO (linear combination of atomic orbitals) basis set. By comparing plane wave basis calculations, we show how these states can be captured by adding long-range orbitals to the standard LCAO basis sets for the extreme cases of planar sp2 (graphene) and curved carbon (C60). In particular, using Bessel functions with a long range as additional basis functions retain a minimal basis size. This provides a smaller and simpler atom-centered basis set compared to the standard pseudo-atomic orbitals (PAOs) with multiple polarization orbitals or by adding non-atom-centered states to the basis.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure