Adiabatic and non-adiabatic charge pumping in a single-level molecular motor

We propose a design for realizing quantum charge pump based on a recent proposal for a molecular motor (Seldenthuis J S et al 2010 ACS Nano 4 6681). Our design is based on the presence of a moiety with a permanent dipole moment which can rotate, thereby modulating the couplings to metallic contacts at both ends of the molecule. Using the non-equilibrium Keldysh Green's function formalism (NEGF), we show that our design indeed generates a pump current. In the non-interacting pump, the variation of frequency from adiabatic to non-adiabatic regime, can be used to control the direction as well as the amplitude of the average current. The effect of Coulomb interaction is considered within the first- and the second- order perturbation. The numerical implementation of the scheme is quite demanding, and we develop an analytical approximation to obtain a speed-up giving results within a reasonable time. We find that the amplitude of the average pumped current can be controlled by both the driving frequency and the Coulomb interaction. The direction of of pumped current is shown to be determined by the phase difference between left and right anchoring groups.