Abstract
Electrons can tunnel with appreciable probability from one metal electrode to the other in metal-insulator-metal tunneling junctions if the insulating layers are sufficiently thin ( ~ 30 Å). If no energy is lost by the electrons in the transition, the tunneling is called elastic. Inelastic electron tunneling, in which electrons in filled states on one side of the metal lose energy to some excitation in the barrier region, but still have enough energy to finish up in a previously empty final state on the other side of the barrier, can also occur. The inelastic tunneling process occurs, for the low temperatures at which tunneling spectra are run, only if the bias energy eV is greater than the excitation energy ћω. Since the inelastic tunneling process represents an additional tunneling channel, the total conductance of the junction is greater for biases above the onset voltage V= ћω/e than below it. The conductance increases are quite small, so that second derivatives of the current-voltage characteristics of the junctions are taken: the steps in conductance then appear as peaks, each peak corresponding to the excitation of a particular vibrational mode of the barrier region.
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© 1982 Plenum Press, New York
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Kirtley, J. (1982). The Interaction of Tunneling Electrons with Molecular Vibrations. In: Hansma, P.K. (eds) Tunneling Spectroscopy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1152-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1152-2_2
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