Influence of phonon-associated tunneling rate on transport through a single-molecule transistor

Abstract

We study the electronic transport through a single-molecule transistor (SMT) by considering the phonon-associated tunneling rate. We find that the electron–phonon interaction (EPI) changes the constant conductivities of the leads into a multi-channel structure of single vibration frequency. This interference of the multi-channel tunneling process results in a bias-dependent tunneling rate and obscures the conductance peaks at large bias voltage. The bias-dependent tunneling rate further causes a remarkable conductivity gap between the chemical potential of the leads ( n = 0 ) and the first phonon sideband ( n = 1 ). These anomalies are consistent with the experimental observations in transport experiments.