Effects of Isotope Substitution on Local Heating and Inelastic current in Hydrogen Molecular Junctions

Abstract

Using first principle approaches, we investigate the effects of isotope substitution on the inelastic features in the hydrogen molecular junction. We observe thatlocal heating and inelastic current have significant isotope-substitution effects. Due to the contact characters, the energies of excited molecular vibrationsare inverse proportional to the square root of the mass. The heavier the molecule, the smaller the onset bias. In the $H_{2}$ and $D_{2}$ junctions, the heavier molecule has a smaller magnitude of electron-vibration interaction. Consequently, there is a crossing in the local temperature around $80 K$. In the HD junction, the electron-vibration interaction is enhanced by asymmetric distribution in mass. It leads to the largest discontinuity in the differential conductance and the most prominent heating in the HD junction. We predict that the junction instability is relevant to isotope substitution. The HD junction has the smallest breakdown voltage compared with the $H_{2}$ and $D_{2}$ junction