Using room temperature current noise to characterize single molecular spectra.
We propose a way to use room temperature random telegraph noise to characterize single molecules adsorbed on a backgated silicon field-effect transistor. The overlap of molecule and silicon electronic wave functions generates a set of trap levels that impose their unique scattering signatures on the voltage-dependent current noise spectrum. Our results are based on numerical modeling of the current noise, obtained by coupling a density functional treatment of the trap placement within the silicon band gap, a quantum kinetic treatment of the output current, and a Monte Carlo evaluation of the trap occupancy under resonance. As an illustrative example, we show how we can extract molecule-specific "fingerprints" of four benzene-based molecules directly from a frequency-voltage colormap of the noise statistics. We argue that such a colormap carries detailed information about the trap dynamics at the Fermi energy, including the presence of correlated interactions, observed experimentally in backgated carbon nanotubes.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia , Charlottesville, Virginia 22904, United States.
Smitha
S
Vasudevan
Avik W
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Ghosh