Density functional theory for steady-state nonequilibrium molecular junctions

Abstract

We present a density functional theory (DFT) for steady-state nonequilibrium quantum systems such as molecular junctions under a finite bias. Based on the steady-state nonequilibrium statistics that maps nonequilibrium to an effective equilibrium, we show that ground-state DFT (GS-DFT) is not applicable in this case and two densities, the total electron density and the density of current-carrying electrons, are needed to uniquely determine the properties of the corresponding nonequilibrium system. A self-consistent mean-field approach based on two densities is then derived. The theory is implemented into SIESTA computational package and applied to study nonequilibrium electronic/transport properties of a realistic carbon-nanotube (CNT)/Benzene junction. Results obtained from our steady-state DFT (SS-DFT) are compared with those of conventional GS-DFT based transport calculations. We show that SS-DFT yields energetically more stable nonequilibrium steady state, predicts significantly lower electric current, and is able to produce correct electronic structures in local equilibrium under a limiting case.