Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 14: Thermoelectric Thin Films and Nanostructures II

DS 14.5: Talk

Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 15:15–15:30, H8

Engineering the thermopower in semiconductor-molecule junctions: towards high thermoelectric efficiency at the nanoscale — Daijiro Nozaki, Haldun Sevincli, Wu Li, •Rafael Gutierrez, and Gianaurelio Cuniberti — Institute for Materials Science and Max Bergmann Center of Biomaterials, Dresden University of Technology, D-01062 Dresden, Germany

We propose a possible route to achieve high thermoelectric efficiency in molecular junctions by combining a local chemical tuning of the molecular electronic states with the use of semiconducting electrodes. The former allows to control the position of the HOMO transmission resonance with respect to the Fermi energy while the latter fulfills a twofold purpose: the suppression of electronlike contributions to the thermopower and the cut-off of the HOMO transmission tails into the semiconductor band gap. As a result a large thermopower can be obtained. Our results strongly suggest that large figures of merit in such molecular junctions can be achieved [1].

[1] Engineering the thermopower in semiconductor-molecule junctions: towards high thermoelectric efficiency at the nanoscale, D. Nozaki, H. Sevincli, W. Li, R. Gutierrez, and G. Cuniberti, arxiv preprint: cond-mat 0908.0438 (2009).