Electronic conduction in a model three-terminal molecular transistor.

The electronic conduction of a novel, three-terminal molecular architecture, analogous to a heterojunction bipolar transistor, is studied. In this architecture, two diode arms consisting of donor-acceptor molecular wires fuse through a ring, while a gate modulating wire is a pi-conjugated wire. The calculated results show the enhancement or depletion mode of a transistor on applying a gate field along the positive or negative direction. A small gate field is required to switch on the current in the proposed architecture. The changes in the electronic conduction can be attributed to the intrinsic dipolar molecular architecture in terms of the evolution of molecular wavefunctions, specifically the one associated with the terphenyl group of the modulating wire in the presence of the gate field.