Electronic conduction in a three-terminal molecular transistor

TL;DR

This paper investigates a novel three-terminal molecular transistor architecture, demonstrating how a gate field can modulate electronic conduction by altering molecular wavefunctions, with potential for low-power switching.

Contribution

It introduces a new molecular transistor design with a ring-fused donor-acceptor architecture and analyzes its conduction modulation via gate fields.

Findings

Gate field can switch the device on and off.

Small gate fields are sufficient for switching.

Conduction changes are linked to molecular wavefunction evolution.

Abstract

The electronic conduction of a novel, three-terminal molecular architecture, analogous to a heterojunction bipolar transistor is studied. In this architecture, two diode arms consisting of donor-acceptor molecular wires fuse through a ring, while a gate modulating wire is a \pi-conjugated wire. The calculated results show the enhancement or depletion mode of a transistor by applying a gate field along the positive or negative direction. A small gate field is required to switch on the current in the proposed architecture. The changes in the electronic conduction can be attributed to the intrinsic dipolar molecular architecture in terms of the evolution of molecular wavefunctions, specifically the one associated with the terphenyl group of the modulating wire in the presence of the gate field.