Molecular sensor based on graphene nanoribbons

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermoelectric properties of graphene nanoribbons with attached organic molecules, demonstrating their potential as robust molecular sensors through theoretical modeling of their thermopower response.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical study of thermoelectric behavior in graphene nanoribbons with organic molecules, highlighting their robustness as molecular sensors under various conditions.

Findings

Sharp peaks in thermopower at molecular eigenenergies

Thermopower profiles are robust against temperature variations

Disorder does not significantly affect thermoelectric response

Abstract

In this work we study thermoelectric properties of graphene nanoribbons with side-attached organic molecules. By adopting a single-band tight binding Hamiltonian and the Green's function formalism, we calculated the transmission and Seebeck coefficients for different hybrid systems. The corresponding thermopower profiles exhibit a series of sharp peaks at the eigenenergies of the isolated molecule. We study the effects of the temperature on the thermoelectric response, and we consider random configurations of molecule distributions, in different disorder regimes. The main characteristics of the thermopower are not destroyed under temperature and disorder, indicating the robustness of the system as a proposed molecular thermo-sensor device.