Theory of the molecular resonant tunneling diode
Matthias Ernzerhof* and Gustavo E. Scuseria
Department of Chemistry, Rice University,
Houston, TX 77005, USA
This is an abstract
for a presentation given at the
Eighth
Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.
There will be a link from here to the full article when it is
available on the web.
Recently, a molecular electronic device has been constructed [J. Chen, M. A. Reed, A. M. Rawlett, and J. M. Tour, Science 286, 1550 (1990)] that shows a negative differential resistance. We here present a simple theoretical interpretation of this experiment in terms of molecular orbital theory. We explain the negative differential resistance and, on the basis of our model, we suggest new experiments. The proposed mechanism turns out to be a modification of the standard mechanism of a solid state resonant tunneling diode.
*Corresponding Address:
Matthias Ernzerhof
Department of Chemistry, Rice University,
P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77005, USA
Email: [email protected]
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