Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 91: [MA] Poster II

O 91.61: Poster

Friday, March 30, 2012, 11:00–14:00, Poster A

Realization of an experimental setup for temperature dependent measurements of the Spin Seebeck Effect — •Daniel Meier, Hanno Meyer zu Theenhausen, Jan-Michael Schmalhorst, and Günter Reiss — Thin Films and Physics of Nanostructures, Physics Department, Bielefeld University, Germany

Spin caloritronics is a growing field of research in the branch of spintronics, which combines spin, charge and heat currents. The discovery of the spin Seebeck effect (SSE) [1] gives a method for a thermal spin generator. The effect was first studied in Permalloy (Py) thin films on Sapphire substrates [1], which were partly covered by thin Pt stripes. When an in-plane temperature gradient is applied perpendicular to the Pt stripes a spin current into the Pt can be generated, which can be converted into an electromotive force via the inverse spin Hall effect. As a consequence one can measure a voltage between the ends of the Pt stripe in a range of a few µ V. The voltage size and sign depends on the position of the Pt stripe on the Py film and on the size of the temperature gradient [1].

This work presents a setup for SSE measurements at variable temperatures. It was tested on various Py/Pt samples grown on MgO and Sapphire substrates utilizing conventional photo lithography or shadow mask techniques. A high resolution of about 50nV was achieved when measuring the planar Nernst effect in the different samples.

[1] K. Uchida et al., Nature Vol. 455, 2008, 778–781