Revealing Molecule-Internal Mechanisms that Control Phonon Heat Transport through Single-Molecule Junctions by a Genetic Algorithm Measurements of the thermal conductance of single-molecule junctions have recently been reported. It is presently unclear how much the heat transport can be controlled through molecule-internal effects. The search for molecules with lowest and highest thermal conductance is complicated by the gigantic chemical space. Here, we describe a systematic search for molecules with a low or a high phononic thermal conductance using a genetic algorithm. Beyond individual structures of well-performing molecules, delivered by the genetic algorithm, we analyze patterns and identify the different physical and chemical mechanisms to suppress or enhance phonon heat flow. In detail, mechanisms revealed to reduce phonon transport are related to the choice of terminal linker blocks, substituents and corresponding mass disorder or destructive interference, meta couplings, and molecule-internal twist. For a high thermal conductance, the molecules should instead be rather uniform and chain-like. The identified mechanisms are systematically analyzed at different levels of theory, and their significance is classified. Our findings are expected to be important for the emerging field of molecular phononics.

Revealing Molecule-Internal Mechanisms that Control Phonon Heat Transport through Single-Molecule Junctions by a Genetic Algorithm

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

How can we effectively control thermal conductance at the single-molecule level, especially when there is a huge chemical space to explore? Our new preprint tackles this challenge head on!

Read the full preprint here:
doi.org/10.48550/arX...

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Greetings from the APS Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, CA!
Looking forward to presenting my work on Thursday, where I'll showcase how artificial intelligence can uncover mechanisms that control phonon heat transport in nanostructures.
summit.aps.org/events/MAR-Q...
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Mechanoelectric sensitivity reveals destructive quantum interference in single-molecule junctions - Nature Communications Quantum interference plays an important role in single-molecule charge transport with sharp features predicted in transmission. Here, the authors reconstruct the destructive quantum interference featu...

Mechanoelectric sensitivity reveals destructive quantum interference in single-molecule junctions by Agrait et al.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...