Sub-Poissonian shot noise in molecular wires

Abstract

We investigate the transport behavior of polyene molecules sandwiched between two metallic contacts using the nonequilibrium Green’s function formalism. We calculate both current and noise power as a function of applied voltage and show that they decrease with increasing size of the polyene molecules. We find that even with symmetric connection to metallic contacts, current-versus-voltage curves can be asymmetric for asymmetrically substituted polyenes. Most importantly, we demonstrate a crossover from Poissonian to sub-Poissonian behavior in the shot noise as a function of applied voltage. The algorithm for noise power calculation can be used for designing molecules with low noise.