NatWi - Uri Peskin

“Cooling by Heating” - Towards Stable Molecular Electronic Devices

Small molecules are well known as drugs, food flavorings, perfumes and so forth, owing to their remarkable role in chemistry and biology. In the past two decades molecules found their way into another new application, where they are proposed as components in nano-scale electronics. This promising idea relies, however, on the ability to maintain the integrity of a single molecule under extreme conditions, where electrons are passing through the molecule at a rate comparable to its internal motions. For most molecules this leads to heating, conformation changes and chemical bond rupture, which not only interferes with the electronic device operation, but also makes it prone to break down. Our research aims to understand the physics underlying these processes, and to harness the knowledge gained for preserving the mechanical stability of molecular electronics devices. We recently proposed that the mechanical stability of a single molecule electronic device should improve when the ambient temperature is increased. This counter-intuitive phenomenon was recently revealed also experimentally. While it is too early to assess the practical consequences of this discovery to the development of molecular electronic devices, the idea of “cooling by heating” already challenges our general understanding of nano-scale systems in far from equilibrium conditions.