Shifting the Voltage Drop in Electron Transport Through a Single Molecule

Phys Rev Lett. 2015 Jul 3;115(1):016802. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.016802. Epub 2015 Jul 2.

Abstract

A Mn-porphyrin was contacted on Au(111) in a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Differential conductance spectra show a zero-bias resonance that is due to an underscreened Kondo effect according to many-body calculations. When the Mn center is contacted by the STM tip, the spectrum appears to invert along the voltage axis. A drastic change in the electrostatic potential of the molecule involving a small geometric relaxation is found to cause this observation.