Slow Vibrations in Transport through Molecules

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to measure slow molecular conformational changes during electron transport by fixing the molecule and controlling coupling strengths, revealing long-timescale molecular dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel measurement setup that captures slow molecular jumps, providing insights into long-timescale molecular deformations during electron transport.

Findings

Measurement of slow molecular jumps is feasible with the proposed setup.

The method reveals long-timescale molecular deformation processes.

Controlled coupling strengths enable detection of metastable state transitions.

Abstract

We show how one can measure the signal from slow jumps of a single molecule between metastable positions using a setup where the molecule is fixed to one lead, and one of the coupling strengths is controlled externally. Such a measurement yields information about slow processes deforming the molecule in times much longer than the characteristic time scales for the electron transport process.