Thermal Properties of Ordered and Disordered DNA Chains: Efficient Energy Conversion.

Considering the numerous possibilities of having suitable thermoelectric energy conversion at nano-scale level, especially for molecular systems, in the present work we put forward a new proposal along this using a flat DNA segment as a functional element. It is modeled by coupling two chains to a form a two-stranded ladder like geometry, with interactions to first neighbors, within the tight-binding prescription. We critically investigate electrical and thermal properties of DNA molecule depending on the length of the system, temperature, molecule-to-lead coupling and the degree of (correlated) disorder. Our analysis might be helpful in analyzing thermoelectric signatures of correlated and uncorrelated disordered systems, and can be verified in laboratory.