Conduction Mechanism in a Molecular Hydrogen Contact

We present first principles calculations for the conductance of a hydrogen molecule bridging a pair of Pt electrodes. The transmission function has a wide plateau with T approximately 1 which extends across the Fermi level and indicates the existence of a single, robust conductance channel with nearly perfect transmission. Through a detailed Wannier function analysis we show that the H(2) bonding state is not involved in the transport and that the plateau forms due to strong hybridization between the H(2) antibonding state and states on the adjacent Pt atoms. The Wannier functions furthermore allow us to derive a resonant-level model for the system with all parameters determined from the fully self-consistent Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian.