# The Effects of Environment on Thermopower and Thermocurrent in Open Molecular Junctions

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how environmental interactions influence thermopower and thermocurrent in open molecular junctions, revealing that phonon excitation by the environment can significantly alter thermoelectric properties.

## Contribution

It introduces a model of an open molecular junction with phonon-environment coupling and analyzes its impact on thermoelectric effects in both linear and non-linear regimes.

## Key findings

- Environment can suppress or enhance thermocurrent depending on onsite energy.
- Phonon excitation affects the Seebeck coefficient in the linear regime.
- Environmental effects are significant in thermoelectric behavior of molecular junctions.

## Abstract

In this work, we consider an open single level molecular junction with electrons coupled to a single frequency phonon mode, in which the phonons are also coupled to another heat bath. By applying a temperature gradient between the electrical leads and investigating thermocurrent in non-linear regime, it is shown that the environment can excite phonons which may result in either suppression or very significant enhancement of thermocurrent, depending on the onsite energy. Similarly, in the linear regime the effects of environment are seen in the Seebeck coefficient.