Experimental evidence of the effect of quantum interference on the room-temperature electrical conductance of single-molecules ¹ opens the possibility of manipulating quantum interference in single molecules and self-assembled molecular layers.

In this talk, I will present a brief outline of current understanding of quantum interference in single-molecules² and then discuss our recent works³ demonstrating how quantum interference can be exploited to increase the thermoelectric performance of single molecules and assemblies of molecules connected to nano-gap electrodes. Results will be presented for the thermoelectric properties of metallo-porphyrins, endohedral fullerenes and oligoynes.

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2. Lambert C.J., Soc. Rev. 44, 875-888 (2015); Geng, et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 137, 4469 (2015); Sangtarash et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 137 11425 (2015); D. Manrique, et al., Nature Comm. 6 6389 (2015); Berritta et al, Nanoscale 7 1096 (2015)
3. Evangeli et al., Nano Letters 13, 2141-2145 (2013); Garcia-Suarez et al, Nanotechnology 25, 205402 (2014); Sadeghi et al, Nano Lett. 15, 7467-7472 (2015); Manrique et al., Lett. 16, 1308−1316 (2016); Ismael et al, Nanoscale 7 17338 (2015); Rincón-García at al, Nature Materials, 15, 289–293 (2016); Han et al., Nature Comm. 7 11281 (2016); M. Noori et al, Nanoscale 9 (16), 5299-5304 (2017); Q. Al-Galiby et al, Nanoscale 9 (14), 4819-4825 (2017)