Standing Friedel waves: a quantum probe of electronic states in nanoscale devices

Density Functional Theory for Steady-State Nonequilibrium Molecular Junctions

We present a density functional theory (DFT) for steady-state nonequilibrium quantum systems such as molecular junctions under a finite bias. Based on the steady-state nonequilibrium statistics that maps nonequilibrium to an effective equilibrium, we show that ground-state DFT (GS-DFT) is not applicable in this case and two densities, the total electron density and the density of current-carrying electrons, are needed to uniquely determine the properties of the corresponding nonequilibrium system. A self-consistent mean-field approach based on two densities is then derived. The theory is implemented into SIESTA computational package and applied to study nonequilibrium electronic/transport properties of a realistic carbon-nanotube (CNT)/Benzene junction. Results obtained from our steady-state DFT (SS-DFT) are compared with those of conventional GS-DFT based transport calculations. We show that SS-DFT yields energetically more stable nonequilibrium steady state, predicts significantly lower electric current, and is able to produce correct electronic structures in local equilibrium under a limiting case.

Nucleotide capacitance calculation for DNA sequencing

Using a first-principles linear response theory, the capacitance of the DNA nucleotides, adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine, are calculated. The difference in the capacitance between the nucleotides is studied with respect to conformational distortion. The result suggests that although an alternate current capacitance measurement of a single-stranded DNA chain threaded through a nanogap electrode may not be sufficient to be used as a standalone method for rapid DNA sequencing, the capacitance of the nucleotides should be taken into consideration in any GHz-frequency electric measurements and may also serve as an additional criterion for identifying the DNA sequence.