Manifestation of electrode surface states in molecular conduction

Abstract

We present a conduction mechanism across molecular junctions which derives from conductance resonances that are not associated with particular molecular orbitals. Instead, the resonances are induced by states localized at the surface of the electrodes. To this end, we studied the conductance of a C60 molecule bridging two carbon nanotubes. A simple tight-binding model is employed to investigate analytically the basic features of the effect.