In recent years, several experimental groups have reported measurements of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of individual or small numbers of molecules. Even three-terminal measurements showing evidence of transistor action has been reported using carbon nanotubes [1, 2] as well as self-assembled monolayers of conjugated polymers. These developments have attracted much attention from the semiconductor industry and there is great interest from an applied point of view to model and understand the capabilities of molecular conductors.

Published in "Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology Handbook" edited by W. Goddard, D. Brenner, S. Lyshevski and G. Iafrate, published by CRC

1. Introduction
2. Qualitative Discussion
3. Coulomb Blockade?
4. Non Equilibrium Green's Function (NEGF) Formalism
5. An Example: Quantum Point Contact (QPC)
6. Concluding Remarks
7. MATLAB Codes

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• M. Paulsson, F. Zahid, and S. Datta, "Resistance of a Molecule," chapter in Handbook of Nanotechnology, ed. S. Lyshevski, CRC Press, 2002, ISBN: 0-849312000.

• Magnus Paulsson, Ferdows Zahid, Supriyo Datta (2003), "Resistance of a Molecule," https://nanohub.org/resources/123.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. molecular electronics
2. nanoelectronics
3. NEGF