Impact of Temperature on Seebeck Coefficient of Nodal Line Semimetal in Molecular Conductor

Abstract

We examine the impact of temperature (T) on the Seebeck coefficient S, i.e., the T dependence of S for a single-component molecular conductor [Pd(dddt)2] (dddt = 5,6-dihydro-1,4-dithiin-2,3-dithiolate) with a half-filled band, where the coefficient is obtained from a ratio of the thermal conductivity to the electrical conductivity. The present paper demonstrates theoretically the novel result of large anisotropy in the Seebeck coefficient components of three-dimensional Dirac electrons in a molecular conductor. The conductor exhibits a nodal line with the energy variation around the chemical potential and provides the density of states (DOS) with a minimum. Using a threedimensional tight-binding (TB) model in the presence of both impurity and electron–phonon (e–p) scatterings, we study the Seebeck coefficient Sy for the molecular stacking and the most conducting direction. The impact of T on Sy exhibits a sign change, where Sy > 0 with a maximum at high temperatures and Sy < 0 with a minimum at low temperatures. The T dependence of Sy suggests that the contribution from the conduction (valence) band is dominant at low (high) temperatures. Further, it is shown that the the Seebeck coefficient components for perpendicular directions Sx and Sz are much smaller than Sy and present no sign change, in contrast to Sy. These results are analyzed in terms of the spectral conductivity as a function of the energy ϵ close to the chemical potential μ.