Tuning the Conductance of Monatomic Carbon Chain

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that attaching single atoms like H, N, or O to monatomic carbon chains can significantly alter their electrical conductance, providing a potential method for nanoscale electronic tuning.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to tune monatomic carbon chain conductance by single-atom adhesion, supported by ab initio calculations and stability analysis.

Findings

Adhering H reduces conductance by about two orders of magnitude.

Single-atom adhesion is stable at room temperature.

The method enables controllable conductance modification.

Abstract

Ab initio calculations show that the conductance of short monatomic carbon chain can be dramatically modified by adhering a single H, N, or O atom to the chain. For example, the conductance of the pristine chain gets about two orders of magnitude smaller if an H atom is adhered to the chain. By a statistical model, the structure of the carbon chain with the single atom adhered is found to be quite stable at room temperature, indicating that the method can be used to tune the conductance of monatomic carbon chain.