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Shifting the Voltage Drop in Electron Transport Through a Single Molecule

Sujoy Karan, David Jacob, Michael Karolak, Christian Hamann, Yongfeng Wang, Alexander Weismann, Alexander I. Lichtenstein, and Richard Berndt
Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 016802 – Published 2 July 2015
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Abstract

A Mn-porphyrin was contacted on Au(111) in a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Differential conductance spectra show a zero-bias resonance that is due to an underscreened Kondo effect according to many-body calculations. When the Mn center is contacted by the STM tip, the spectrum appears to invert along the voltage axis. A drastic change in the electrostatic potential of the molecule involving a small geometric relaxation is found to cause this observation.

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  • Received 6 February 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.016802

© 2015 American Physical Society

Synopsis

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Molecular Voltage Shift

Published 2 July 2015

Small changes in the configuration of a molecule can significantly influence its resistive behavior in a circuit.

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Authors & Affiliations

Sujoy Karan1,*, David Jacob2, Michael Karolak3, Christian Hamann1, Yongfeng Wang1,†, Alexander Weismann1,‡, Alexander I. Lichtenstein4, and Richard Berndt1

  • 1Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, 24098 Kiel, Germany
  • 2Max-Planck-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik, Weinberg 2, 06120 Halle, Germany
  • 3Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany
  • 4I. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Hamburg, 20355 Hamburg, Germany

  • *karan@physik.uni-kiel.de
  • Present address: Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, Department of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China.
  • weismann@physik.uni-kiel.de

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Issue

Vol. 115, Iss. 1 — 3 July 2015

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