2015/06/06 by Elinor Zerah-Harush, Yonatan Dubi, Zerah-Harush, Elinor +1 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermoelectric Materials and Devices #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum and electron transport phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1506.02164
openalex publication_date 2015/06/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It was recently suggested that molecular junctions would be excellent\nelements for efficient and high-power thermoelectric energy conversion devices.\nHowever, experimental measurements of thermoelectric conversion in molecular\njunctions have indicated rather poor efficiency, raising the question of\nwhether it is indeed possible to design a setup for molecular junctions that\nwill exhibit enhanced thermoelectric performance. Here we suggest that hybrid\nsingle-molecule nanoparticle junctions can serve as efficient thermoelectric\nconverters. The introduction of a semiconducting nanoparticle introduces new\ntuning capabilities, which are absent in conventional metal-molecule-metal\njunctions. Using a generic model for the molecule and nanoparticle with\nrealistic parameters, we demonstrate that the thermopower can be of the order\nof hundreds of microvolts per degree Kelvin, and that the thermoelectric figure\nof merit can reach values close to one, an improvement of four orders of\nmagnitude improvement over existing measurements. This favorable performance\npersists over a wide range of experimentally relevant parameters, and is robust\nagainst disorder (in the form of surface-attached molecules) and against\nelectron decoherence at the nanoparticle molecule interface.\n