Fermi level alignment in single molecule junctions and its dependence on interface structure

The alignment of the Fermi level of a metal electrode within the gap of the hi ghest occupied (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied orbital (LUMO) of a molecule is a key quantity in molecular electronics, which can vary the electron transparency of a single molecule junction by orders of magnitude. We present a quantitative analysis of the relation between this level alignment (which can be estimated from charging free molecules) and charge transfer for bipyridine and biphenyl dithiol...

Estimating the relative alignment between the frontier molecular orbitals that dominates the charge transport through single-molecule junctions represents a challenge for theory. This requires approaches beyond the widely employed framework provided by the density functional theory, wherein the Kohn-Sham "orbitals" are treated as if they were real molecular orbitals, which is not the case. In this paper, we report results obtained by means of quantum chemical calculations, in...

The alignment of molecular levels with the Fermi energy in single molecule junctions is a crucial factor in determining their conductance or the observability of quantum interference effects. In the present study which is based on density functional theory calculations, we explore the zero-bias charge transfer and level alignment for nitro-bipyridyl-phenyl adsorbed between two gold surfaces which we find to vary significantly with the molecular conformation. The net charge tr...

We study the impact of electrode band structure on transport through single-molecule junctions by measuring the conductance of pyridine-based molecules using Ag and Au electrodes. Our experiments are carried out using the scanning tunneling microscope based break-junction technique and are supported by density functional theory based calculations. We find from both experiments and calculations that the coupling of the dominant transport orbital to the metal is stronger for Au...

Inspired by recent measurements of forces and conductances of bipyridine nano-junctions, we have performed density functional theory calculations of structure and electron transport in a bipyridine molecule attached between gold electrodes for seven different contact geometries. The calculations show that both the bonding force and the conductance are sensitive to the surface structure, and that both properties are in good agreement with experiment for contact geometries char...

We investigate the effect on molecular transport due to the different structural aspects of metal-molecule interfaces. The example system chosen is the prototypical molecular device formed by sandwiching the phenyl dithiolate molecule (PDT) between two gold electrodes with different metal-molecule distance, atomic structure at the metallic surface, molecular adsorption geometry and with an additional hydrogen end atom. We find the dependence of the conductance on the metal-mo...

The accurate determination of the lowest electron attachment ($EA$) and ionization ($IP$) energies for molecules embedded in molecular junctions is important for correctly estimating, \emph{e.g.}, the magnitude of the currents ($I$) or the biases ($V$) where an $I-V$-curve exhibits a significant non-Ohmic behavior. Benchmark calculations for the lowest electron attachment and ionization energies of several typical molecules utilized to fabricate single-molecule junctions char...

Based on density-functional theory calculations, we report a detailed study of the single-molecule charge-transport properties for a series of recently synthesized biphenyl-dithiol molecules [D. Vonlanthen et al., Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 48, 8886 (2009); A. Mishchenko et al., Nano Lett. 10, 156 (2010)]. The torsion angle {\phi} between the two phenyl rings, and hence the degree of {\pi} conjugation, is controlled by alkyl chains and methyl side groups. We consider three differ...

The splitting of quasi-Fermi levels (QFLs) represents a key concept utilized to describe finite-bias operations of semiconductor devices, but its atomic-scale characterization remains a significant challenge. Herein, the non-equilibrium QFL or electrochemical potential profiles within single-molecule junctions obtained from the newly developed first-principles multi-space constrained-search density functional formalism are presented. Benchmarking the standard non-equilibrium ...

The effect of vibrational motion on resonant charge transport through single molecule junctions is investigated. The study is based on a combination of first-principles electronic structure calculations to characterize the system and inelastic scattering theory to calculate transport properties. The extension of the methodology to describe hole transport through occupied molecular orbitals is discussed. The methodology is applied to molecular junctions where a benzene molecul...