Intramolecular circuits connected to N electrodes using a scattering matrix approach -: art. no. 155419

The scattering matrix technique is extended to describe the electronic transport characteristics of intramolecular circuits driven in a ballistic or a tunnel transport regime. The circuit is assumed to be connected by N electrodes. As a working example, the electronic properties of a T-node circuit are presented leading to the design of an OR logic gate working in a ballistic regime. In the tunnel regime, only the "node" Kirchhoff law of circuit remains valid at the nodes of an intramolecular tunnel circuit and the electronic characteristics of the branches composing the circuit are mutually independent. It results in a difficult design of a logic OR intramolecular gate of high performance and stability, pointing out the urge for new architectures to implement complex logic functions inside a single molecule.