Density functional tight-binding for self-consistent computation of the transport properties of molecular electronic devices

Abstract

Density Functional theory calculations combined with non-equilibrium Green's function technique have been used to compute electronic transport in organic molecules. In our approach the system Hamiltonian is obtained by means of a self-consistent density-functional tight-binding (DFTB) method. This approach allows a first- principle treatment of systems comprising a large number of atoms. The implementation of the non-equilibrium Green's function technique on the DFTB code allows us to perform computations of the electronic transport properties of organic and inorganic molecular-scale devices. The non-equilibrium Green's functions are used to compute the electronic density self-consistently with the the open-boundary conditions naturally encountered in transport problems and the boundary conditions imposed by the potentials at the contacts. The Hartree potential of the density-functional Hamiltonian is obtained by solving the three-dimensional Poisson's equation involving the non-equilibrium charge density.