2004/05/31 by Jens Koch, Felix von Oppen, Yuval Oreg +1 · 5 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic orbital #Atomic physics #Condensed matter physics #Coupling (piping) #Electron #Excitation #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Materials science #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Molecular physics #Molecule #Phonon #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Seebeck coefficient #Thermoelectric effect #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.70.195107
published as Phys. Rev. B 70, 195107 (2004) · 13 pages, 7 figures included; minor changes, version published in PRB
openalex publication_date 2004/11/12 · arxiv created 2004/11/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the thermopower of single molecules weakly coupled to metallic leads. We model the molecule in terms of the relevant electronic orbitals coupled to phonons corresponding to both internal vibrations and to oscillations of the molecule as a whole. The thermopower is computed by means of rate equations including both sequential-tunneling and cotunneling processes. Under certain conditions, the thermopower allows one to access the electronic and phononic excitation spectrum of the molecule in a linear-response measurement. In particular, we find that the phonon features are more pronounced for weak lead-molecule coupling. This way of measuring the excitation spectrum is less invasive than the more conventional current-voltage characteristic, which, by contrast, probes the system far from equilibrium.