Giant thermopower and figure of merit in single-molecule devices

Abstract

We present a study of the thermopower $S$ and the dimensionless figure of merit $ZT$ in molecules sandwiched between gold electrodes. We show that for molecules with side groups, the shape of the transmission coefficient can be dramatically modified by Fano resonances near the Fermi energy, which can be tuned to produce huge increases in $S$ and $ZT$. This shows that molecules exhibiting Fano resonances have a high efficiency of thermoelectric cooling which is not present for conventional un-gated molecules with only delocalized states along their backbone.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Dependence of Single Molecule Junction Conductance on Molecular Conformation
• Optimal thermoelectric figure of merit of a molecular junction
• Control of electron transport through Fano resonances in molecular wires
• Length-dependent conductance and thermopower in single-molecule junctions of dithiolated oligophenylene derivatives
• Conformation dependence of molecular conductance: chemistry versus geometry