The effect of Coulomb interactions of thermoelectric characteristics of Marcus molecular junctions

Abstract

We present a theoretical study focused on the influence of Coulomb interactions on thermoelectric properties of molecular junctions assuming that electron transport is strongly affected by thermalized phonon modes in the molecular ambient. It is shown that the combined effect of Coulomb interactions between electrons on the molecular states and the reorganization processes in the ambient may significantly affect both Seebeck coefficient and the power factor. Specifically, we show that electron–electron interactions may counter-balance the effect of ambient molecules reorganizations, resulting in qualitative changes in the behavior of both zero-bias conductance and thermopower.