Negative differential resistance in metallic and semiconducting clusters
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abstract
One of the main goals of the multidisciplinary field of nanotechnology is to scale down electronic devices to the range of nanometers (nm) from the present feature size of 50 nm in standard semiconductor integrated circuits. This challenge requires the use of small molecules or clusters to perform as electronic devices. Because a multitude of small organic molecules and clusters can be tailored to precise configurations emulating feature sizes equivalent to fractions of angstroms (10 -10 m), they are potential electronic device candidates. Although it is not yet well established how these small systems can be addressed, they could be used as electronic devices if they present switching behavior. However, switching alone may not be enough; more complex nonlinear current-voltage (I-V) characteristics such as negative differential resistance (NDR) already reported in several experiments may be needed to compensate for the lack of direct addressing. It is demonstrated theoretically in this work that switching and NDR can be achieved because of electronic and electromechanical effects yielding cluster formation; therefore, electronic devices can be made not only from organic molecules but also from small clusters.
