Berlin 2005 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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TT: Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 33: Transport - Nanoelectronics III: Molecular Electronics

TT 33.5: Vortrag

Dienstag, 8. März 2005, 15:00–15:15, TU H3027

Electron-phonon interactions in atomic-scale conductors — •Janne Viljas, Fabian Pauly, and Juan Carlos Cuevas — Institut für Theoretische Festkörperphysik, Universität Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe

With the recent advances in nanofabrication techniques it has become possible to manipulate and explore the electronic transport through atomic-scale wires and individual molecules. This has posed an exciting theoretical challenge, namely the understanding of the conduction mechanisms at the molecular scale. So far, the effort has been mostly concentrated on analysing the role of the electronic structure of the atomic-scale conductors, but little has been done on the role of their internal degrees of freedom. In this talk I will present our efforts to understand what are the effects of the vibrational modes on conduction at the atomic scale. In particular, making use of a tight-binding approach, we describe the influence of the inelastic electron-phonon processes in metallic atomic wires. This allows us to address many different questions such as (i) what determines that in some experimental situations the vibrational modes enhance the current and in some others they reduce it? (ii) What are the possible signatures of these modes in the current-voltage characteristics? (iii) What are the selection rules that explain why some vibrational modes do not show up in the transport experiments?