Molecular Electronics at the Onset of Resonant Tunneling

Replacing semiconductors based electronic components by molecules is expected to yield more efficient, faster and more economic devices with remarkable improvements for future technologies. Experiments have demonstrated that single molecules can conduct electric currents and that molecular properties are indeed reflected in the current. Yet, electronic components should work at high voltages and high currents, which change significantly the electronic and mechanical properties of the molecule. It is therefore an open challenge to prepare molecular devices that perform robustly and in a controlled manner. We propose to meet this challenge by new experiments and theoretical modeling in which we shall follow in time the response of a single molecule to different changes in the voltage, and obtain the missing knowledge towards single molecules based electronics.