Multi-terminal Electron Transport Through Single Phenalenyl Molecule: A Theoretical Study

TL;DR

This theoretical study investigates multi-terminal electron transport in a phenalenyl molecule connected to metallic leads, revealing how lead placement and coupling influence conductance and current-voltage behavior, with implications for molecular device design.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of multi-terminal transport in phenalenyl molecules, emphasizing the effects of lead configuration and coupling on electronic properties.

Findings

Transport characteristics are highly sensitive to lead connection points.

Presence of additional leads significantly alters conductance and current.

Transport properties vary with the number of terminals (2, 3, or 4).

Abstract

We do parametric calculations to elucidate multi-terminal electron transport properties through a molecular system where a single phenalenyl molecule is attached to semi-infinite one-dimensional metallic leads. A formalism based on the Green's function technique is used for the calculations while the model is described by tight-binding Hamiltonian. We explore the transport properties in terms of conductance, reflection probability as well as current-voltage characteristic. The most significant feature we articulate is that all these characteristics are very sensitive to the locations where the leads are connected and also the molecule-to-lead coupling strengths. The presence of other leads also has a remarkable effect on these transport properties. We study these phenomena for two-, three- and four-terminal molecular systems. Our numerical study may be utilized in designing tailor-made molecular electronic devices.