Thermoelectric effect in molecular junctions: A tool for revealing transport mechanisms

Abstract

We investigate the thermopower of a metal-molecule-metal junction taking into account thermal effects on the junction. Based on analytical expressions and numerical simulations we show that the thermoelectric potential reveals valuable information on the mechanisms controlling the electron transfer process, including coherent transmission and thermalized hopping. We also show that at high temperatures the position of the Fermi energy relative to the molecular states can be easily deduced from the thermoelectric potential. Standard current-voltage measurements are insensitive to this information.

References in corpus (15)

• Electron transmission through molecules and molecular interfaces
• Measurement of the conductance of a hydrogen molecule
• Thermoelectric effect in molecular electronics
• Thermal conductance through molecular wires
• Modulation of Thermoelectric Power of Individual Carbon Nanotubes
• Thermopower of Single-Molecule Devices
• Quantum inelastic conductance through molecular wires
• Landauer Theory, Inelastic Scattering and Electron Transport in Molecular Wires
• Coherent electron-phonon coupling and polaron-like transport in molecular wires
• Theory of Vibrationally Inelastic Electron Transport through Molecular Bridges
• Heating in current carrying molecular junctions
• Inelastic tunneling through mesoscopic structures
• Thermopower of a single electron transistor in the regime of strong inelastic cotunneling
• Conduction in molecular junctions: Inelastic effects
• Steady state quantum mechanics of thermally relaxing systems

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• Phonon-thermoelectric transistors and rectifiers
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• Spin-thermopower in interacting quantum dots
• Inelastic effects in molecular junction transport: Scattering and self-consistent calculations for the Seebeck coefficient
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• Transport properties of individual C60-molecules
• From Chemistry to Functionality: Trends for the Length Dependence of the Thermopower in Molecular Junctions
• Local and non-local thermopowers in three-terminal nanostructures
• Thermopower of molecular junctions: Tunneling to hopping crossover in DNA
• Non-Monotonic Thermoelectric Currents and Energy Harvesting in Interacting Double Quantum-Dots
• Thermoelectric properties of vibrating molecule asymmetrically connected to the electrodes
• The effect of Coulomb interactions on nonlinear thermovoltage and thermocurrent in quantum dots
• Effect of assisted hopping on thermopower in an interacting quantum dot
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• Effect of Thermoelectric Cooling in Nanoscale Junctions
• Understanding the length dependence of molecular junction thermopower
• Thermodynamics of the polaron master equation at finite bias
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• Origin of thermoelectric response fluctuations in single-molecule junctions
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• The effect of dephasing on thermoelectric efficiency of molecular junctions
• Dynamical coupling and negative differential resistance from interactions across the molecule-electrode interface in molecular junctions
• Thermoelectric transport properties of an apparent Fermi liquid: Relation to an analytic anomaly in the density of states and application to hole-doped delafossites
• Charge and Spin Thermoelectric Transport in Benzene-Based Molecular Nano-Junctions: A Quantum Many-Body Study
• Charge and heat transport of soft nanosystems in the presence of time-dependent perturbations
• Thermoelectric phenomena in an antiferromagnetic helix: Role of electric field
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• Scattering theory of thermocurrent in quantum dots and molecules
• Thermopower and dynamical Coulomb blockade in non-classical environments
• Effects of correlated hopping on thermoelectric response of a quantum dot strongly coupled to ferromagnetic leads
• Spin caloritronics in collinear ferromagnetic helical structures under irradiation