Quantum Enhancement of the Spin-Thermopower in Single-Molecule Junctions

The thermoelectric effect allows heat to be directly converted into electricity in a device with no moving parts. In systems with broken time-reversal symmetry, a spin-voltage may be generated in response to a temperature gradient via the spin-dependent Seebeck effect. We derive expressions for the linear-response spin-dependent transport in interacting nanostructures and apply them to investigate the thermoelectric and thermodynamic response of single-molecule junctions with destructive quantum interference features (nodes) in a channel of their transmission spectrum. When the spin-splitting is sufficient a pure spin-thermopower twice that of the charge thermopower is predicted. The importance of manybody correlations and dephasing as well as the connection of these results to information theory are investigated.