Molecular sensing using armchair graphene nanoribbon.

In molecular electronics, the conductance strongly depends on the frontier energy levels and spatial orientations of molecules. Utilizing these features, we investigate the electron transport characteristics of conjugated molecules attached on an armchair graphene nanoribbon. The resulting sharp reduction in the transmission which represents molecular fingerprints and the change of the transmission depending on the molecular orientation, are examined in accordance with a unified picture of the Fano-Anderson model. These characteristics, being unique for each molecule, would be applicable to molecular recognition and configurational analysis. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]