Tuning the charge flow between Marcus regimes in an organic thin-film device

Abstract

Marcus’s theory of electron transfer, initially formulated six decades ago for redox reactionsin solution, is now of great importance for very diverse scientific communities. The molecularscale tunability of electronic properties renders organic semiconductor materials in principlean ideal platform to test this theory. However, the demonstration of charge transfer indifferent Marcus regions requires a precise control over the driving force acting on the chargecarriers. Here, we make use of a three-terminal hot-electron molecular transistor, which letsus access unconventional transport regimes. Thanks to the control of the injection energy ofhot carriers in the molecular thinfilm we induce an effective negative differential resistancestate that is a direct consequence of the Marcus Inverted Region.