Molecular transistor

Patent Pending Single molecule transistors are fundamentally different from the ones known from bulk electronics. The gate in a conventional (field-effect) transistor determines the conductance between the source and drain electrode by controlling the density of charge carriers between them, whereas the gate in a single molecule transistor controls the feasibility of a single electron to jump on and off the molecule by modifying the energy of the molecular orbitals. One of the effects of this difference is that the single molecule transistor is almost binary: it is either ON or OFF. This opposes its bulk counterparts, which have quadratic responses to gate voltage.