Simultaneous Determination of Conductance and Thermopower of Single Molecule Junctions

Abstract

We report the first concurrent determination of conductance (<i>G</i>) and thermopower (<i>S</i>) of single-molecule junctions via direct measurement of electrical and thermoelectric currents using a scanning tunneling microscope-based break-junction technique. We explore several amine-Au and pyridine-Au linked molecules that are predicted to conduct through either the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) or the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO), respectively. We find that the Seebeck coefficient is negative for pyridine-Au linked LUMO-conducting junctions and positive for amine-Au linked HOMO-conducting junctions. Within the accessible temperature gradients (<30 K), we do not observe a strong dependence of the junction Seebeck coefficient on temperature. From histograms of thousands of junctions, we use the most probable Seebeck coefficient to determine a power factor, <i>GS</i>², for each junction studied, and find that <i>GS</i>² increases with <i>G</i>. Finally, we find that conductance and Seebeck coefficient values are in good quantitative agreement with our self-energy corrected density functional theory calculations