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Spin Seebeck effect

Thinks globally but acts locally

Nature Materials volume 9, pages 880–881 (2010)Cite this article

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Experiments on magnetic insulators and semiconductors imply that the spin Seebeck effect is conceptually different from the standard thermoelectric effect, launching new challenges for both theorists and experimentalists in spintronics.

Thermopower, also known as the Seebeck effect, is the ability of conductors to generate electric voltages from thermal gradients. This and other closely related thermoelectric effects are the basis for nanoscale heat-management devices, which are considered key factors for the continuation of Moore's law: as charge-based logic devices shrink in size, the Joule heating generated by charge currents becomes too high for them to operate reliably1. One route around this problem is to search for different logic variables that may require lower power consumption, as is done in the field of spintronics where the spin of the electron, instead of its charge, is the variable being manipulated2. An alternative route was suggested recently by the discovery of the spin Seebeck effect, where a thermal gradient in a ferromagnetic metal was found to generate a spin accumulation over long distances3. This effect occupies a central role in a new subfield of spintronics, termed spin caloritronics4, which explores the possibility of controlling spin currents by means of heat currents and vice versa. Now, as reported in Nature Materials, two independent teams have uncovered important findings on this effect. Uchida et al. show that it is not limited to conductors, as in the case of the charge Seebeck effect, but that it also occurs in ferromagnetic insulators5, opening a possible new frontier in this field. Jaworski et al. study the effect in ferromagnetic semiconductors and prove experimentally that the spin Seebeck effect observed in metals does not originate from charge flow6. The spin Seebeck effect, which at first seemed to behave as a global thermal transport effect, seems instead to be acting locally with regard to spin diffusion.

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Figure 1: Spin Seebeck effect.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jairo Sinova is in the Department of Physics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4242, USA, and Institute of Physics ASCR, Cukrovarnická 10, 162 53 Praha 6, Czech Republic. sinova@physics.tamu.edu,

    Jairo Sinova

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Sinova, J. Thinks globally but acts locally. Nature Mater 9, 880–881 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2880

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