Thermopower of benzenedithiol molecular junctions with nickel electrodes

Abstract

Thermoelectric measurements of benzenedithiol molecular junction using Ni and Au electrodes were conducted by using a home-built scanning tunnelling microscope. Positive and negative Seebeck (S) coefficient values were obtained for benzenedithiol when using Au and Ni electrodes, which indicate that the charge carriers are holes and electrons, respectively. The negative S value could be attributed to the hybrid states created by d states of Ni.

Keywords:

• Thermoelectricity
• Seebeck coefficient
• Molecular junctions
• Scanning tunnelling microscope
• Spin-polarization

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A) (Grant no. 20343741) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas ‘Molecular Architectonics’ (Grant no. 25110012).