Efficient heating of single-molecule junctions for thermoelectric studies at cryogenic temperatures

Abstract

The energy dependent thermoelectric response of a single molecule contains valuable information about its transmission function and its excited states. However, measuring it requires devices that can efficiently heat up one side of the molecule while being able to tune its electrochemical potential over a wide energy range. Furthermore, to increase junction stability devices need to operate at cryogenic temperatures. In this work we report on a new device architecture to study the thermoelectric properties and the conductance of single molecules simultaneously over a wide energy range. We employ a sample heater in direct contact with the metallic electrodes contacting the single molecule which allows us to apply temperature biases up to $\Delta T=60$K with minimal heating of the molecular junction. This makes these devices compatible with base temperatures $T_{\mathrm{bath}}<2$K and enables studies in the linear ($\Delta T\ll T_{\mathrm{molecule}}$) and non-linear ($\Delta T\gg T_{\mathrm{molecule}}$) thermoelectric transport regimes.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Single-Material Graphene Thermocouples
• Direct Mapping of Local Seebeck Coefficient in 2D Material Nanostructures via Scanning Thermal Gate Microscopy
• Controlling the entropy of a single-molecule junction
• Magnetic field dependence of the thermopower of Kondo-correlated quantum dots: Comparison with experiment
• Implementation of SNS thermometers into molecular devices for cryogenic thermoelectric experiments
• Electric-field-driven conductance switching in encapsulated graphene nanogaps