Research

Understanding chemical trends in molecular electron transport

Traditionally, chemistry has involved the study of molecules in solution, the gas phase or as solid crystals. Today, nanofabrication techniques have made it possible to bind molecules in a huge array of different environments and we need to understand how different chemical functionalities influence properties like conductivity.

We are particularly interested in quantum interference effects in molecular electron transport and how simple changes in conjugation can result in dramatically different transport properties. We study the inelastic processes in these types of junctions (how the molecule is heated and dissipates this heat, while current flows) and the dynamics of the system as a force is applied to the molecule.

In all cases, our particular focus is on the chemistry of the system and the molecules involved. We want to develop an intuitive understanding of how we can use molecular functionalities to design systems with electronic properties of interest.

Major Projects

We have previously had two major projects running in the group. You can read more about the details on their respective project pages:

ERC Starting Grant Project: CHEMHEAT

Sapere Aude Project: Simulating Single Molecule Pulling Experiments