Thermoelectricity in single-molecule quantum dots

Description

Thermoelectricity is the conversion between voltage and temperature differences in a system. While it has been a technologically important concept to integrate in electronics; fundamentally, it is a study of the relationship between electronic and thermal properties of a material. Theoretical studies suggest that single-molecule devices can host strong thermoelectric effects. This advantage is achieved via different molecular designs for an optimized tunnel coupling or a sharp transmission close to the Fermi energy, etc. Recently, we have created single-molecule thermoelectric quantum dot devices, where valuable information such as Seebeck coefficient and the thermoelectric power factor are directly obtained from their strong thermoelectric responses. We further show that fundamental physical quantities, including entropy changes, excited states and the universality of the Kondo effect, can be determined in the thermoelectric quantum dot devices. The rich physics in thermoelectric quantum dot devices and their technological implications open another research direction for nanoscale devices.

Period	16 Mar 2022
Event title	APS March Meeting 2022
Event type	Conference
Location	Chicago, United StatesShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International