Giant thermopower and figure of merit in single-molecule devices

C. M. Finch, V. M. García-Suárez, and C. J. Lambert

Phys. Rev. B 79, 033405 – Published 12 January 2009

Abstract

We present a study of the thermopower $S$ and the dimensionless figure of merit $Z T$ in molecules sandwiched between gold electrodes. We show that for molecules with side groups, the shape of the transmission coefficient can be dramatically modified by Fano resonances near the Fermi energy, which can be tuned to produce huge increases in $S$ and $Z T$ . This shows that molecules exhibiting Fano resonances have a high efficiency of thermoelectric cooling which is not present for conventional ungated molecules with only delocalized states along their backbone.