Figure 2

Electric and thermoelectric characterization. (a, b) Show example \(\mathrm {d}I/\mathrm {d}V\) curves, shape evolution of \(\mathrm {d}I/\mathrm {d}V\) (color coded, every \(\mathrm {d}I/\mathrm {d}V\) is normalized to it’s mean value), conductances G and Seebeck coefficients S measured during mechanical variation of the junction’s distance (here: closing). (a) A bare gold-gold junction and (b) a junction with fullerene end-capped molecules^16,17 (SI) applied to the electrodes. (c, d) Show correlations of S and G using the data of the whole ensembles enclosing 21 (27) opening and closing cycles with a total of 14431 (25519) \(\mathrm {d}I/\mathrm {d}V\) and S measurements. Green dots correspond to the data in (a, b). Orange dots mark a sub-ensemble with high conversion efficiency. Gray lines are eye guides which separate \(G-S\) pairs from exclusion areas.