Thermoelectricity in single-molecule devices

Abstract

As the miniaturization of electronics continuously progresses, harvesting and generating thermoelectric energy with high efficiency become a key concept to integrate. Theoretical studies suggest that single-molecule devices are ideal candidates for thermoelectric devices with unprecedentedly high efficiencies. Such advantage is achieved by molecular designs with ideal energy alignment, optimized tunnel coupling or strong quantum interference features, etc. In our single-molecule thermoelectric devices, we have demonstrated the possibility to extract important thermoelectric functions such as Seebeck coefficient and the power factor. In addition, we can obtain crucial physical parameters in single-molecule devices such as the entropy changes, excited states or the universality of the Kondo effect via the thermoelectric study. We expect, as our works have shown, thermoelectric studies in single-molecule devices will bring us more useful innovative devices and more fundamental understanding of nanoscale systems.