The influence of thermal fluctuations on the electronic transport of alkeno-thiolates

Author

Pecchia, Alessandro ; Gheorghe, Marieta ; Latessa, Luca ; Di Carlo, Aldo ; Lugli, Paolo

Author_Institution

Dipt. di Ingegneria Elettronica, Univ. di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

Volume

3

Issue

3

fYear

2004

Firstpage

353

Lastpage

357

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the influence of molecular vibrations on the tunneling of electrons through alkeno-thiolates of varying lengths sandwiched in between two gold contacts. The study is confined to the elastic scattering. The vibrational modes are treated quantum-mechanically and the tunneling current is computed as an ensemble average over the distribution of the atomic configurations, obtained by a suitable approximation of the density matrix for the normal mode oscillators. The quantum-mechanical treatment is necessary in order to correctly include the zero-point fluctuations. The calculations show no temperature dependence for the tunneling current in the regime between 270-350 K.

Keywords

Fermi level; bonds (chemical); density functional theory; gold; molecular electronics; monolayers; organic compounds; phonons; self-assembly; tight-binding calculations; tunnelling; 270 to 350 K; Au-Au; alkeno-thiolates; density matrix; elastic scattering; electronic transport; gold contacts; molecular vibrations; normal mode oscillators; quantum mechanical treatment; quantum mechanics; thermal fluctuations; tunneling; tunneling current; vibrational modes; zero-point fluctuations; Distributed computing; Electrons; Fluctuations; Gold; Oscillators; Particle scattering; Quantum computing; Temperature; Tunneling; Vibrations; Coherent tunneling; molecular electronics; molecular vibrations;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nanotechnology, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1536-125X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNANO.2004.828573

Filename

1331324