Gate Control of the Conduction Mechanism Transition from Tunneling to Thermally Activated Hopping.
We explore gate control of electron transport through molecules with different repeat units. In the framework of reduced density matrix theory, the computational results show (i) exponential decay in the tunneling regime and (ii) Arrhenius behavior and similar activation energies in the hopping regime, which are qualitatively consistent with experimental observations. Moreover, the gate enables tuning of the activation energy, indicating that the continuous transition from tunneling to hopping could be experimentally observed. The activation energy-gate voltage characteristics are introduced to investigate different conduction regimes.
Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States.
Liang-Yan
LY
Hsu
Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States.
Ning
N
Wu
Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States.
Herschel
H
Rabitz
activation energy; conductance; electron transfer; molecular electronics; quantum transport; reduced density matrix theory