Cooperative effects in inelastic tunneling

TL;DR

This paper investigates how cooperative intermolecular effects influence inelastic tunneling signals in molecular junctions, revealing that such effects can alter spectral peak heights even without direct interactions, impacting experimental interpretation.

Contribution

It introduces the concept that cooperative effects can modify inelastic tunneling spectra in simple models, highlighting the need for careful comparison with single-molecule calculations.

Findings

Peak heights in inelastic spectra can be affected by cooperative effects.

Intermolecular effects may occur without direct interactions.

Experimental results should be compared cautiously with single-molecule models.

Abstract

Several aspects of intermolecular effects in molecular conduction have been studied in recent years. These experimental and theoretical studies, made on several setups of molecular conduction junctions, have focused on the current-voltage characteristic that is usually dominated by the elastic transmission properties of such junctions. In this paper we address cooperative intermolecular effects in the inelastic tunneling signal calculated for simple generic models of such systems. We find that peaks heights in the inelasticspectrum may be affected by such cooperative effects even when direct intermolecular interactions can be disregarded. This finding suggests that comparing experimental results to calculations made on single-molecule junctions should be done with care.