Thermoelectric transport properties in graphene connected molecular junctions

Abstract

We study the electronic contribution to the main thermoelectric properties of a molecular junction consisting of a single quantum dot coupled to graphene external leads. The system electrical conductivity (G), Seebeck coefficient ($S$), and the thermal conductivity ($\kappa$), are numerically calculated based on a Green's function formalism that includes contributions up to the Hartree-Fock level. We consider the system leads to be made either of pure or gapped-graphene. To describe the free electrons in the gapped-graphene electrodes we used two possible scenarios, the massive gap scenario, and the massless gap scenario, respectively. In all cases, the Fano effect is responsible for a strong violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law and we found a substantial increase of the system figure of merit $ZT$ due to a drastic reduction of the system thermal coefficient. In the case of gapped-graphene electrodes, the system figure of merit presents a maximum at an optimal value of the energy gap of the order of $\Delta/D\sim$ 0.002 (massive gap scenario) and $\Delta/D\sim$ 0.0026 (massless gap scenario). Additionally, for all cases, the system figure of merit is temperature dependent.