Enhancing Thermoelectric Properties Through a Three-Terminal Benzene Molecule

TL;DR

This paper explores how a three-terminal benzene molecule can significantly improve thermoelectric efficiency and power output, offering insights into optimizing molecular-scale energy conversion devices.

Contribution

It introduces a three-terminal setup for benzene molecules and demonstrates enhanced thermoelectric performance compared to traditional two-terminal systems.

Findings

Enhanced figure of merit with three terminals

Improved efficiency at maximum power

Tuning temperature differences boosts performance

Abstract

The thermoelectric transport through a benzene molecule with three metallic terminals is discussed. Using general local and non-local transport coeffcients, we investigated different conductance and thermopower coefficients within the linear response regime. Based on the Onsager coefficient which depend on the number of terminal efficiencies, efficiency at maximum power is also studied. In the three-terminal set up with tuning temperature differences, a great enhancement of the figure of merit is observed. Results also show that the third terminal model can be useful to improve the efficiency at maximum output power compared to the two-terminal model.