Spin Seebeck Power Conversion

TL;DR

This paper reviews the emerging field of spin caloritronics, exploring how spin, charge, and heat currents can be controlled in magnetic nanostructures for thermoelectric power generation, highlighting new strategies and efficiencies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of spin caloritronics, including physics, models, effects, and efficiency expressions, which are novel in integrating spin and thermoelectric phenomena.

Findings

Analysis of spin-dependent thermoelectric effects

Derivation of efficiency and ZT expressions for spin caloritronic devices

Discussion of spin Seebeck and Peltier effects in ferromagnets

Abstract

Spin caloritronics is the science and technology to control spin, charge, and heat currents in magnetic nanostructures. The spin degree of freedom provides new strategies for thermolelectric power generation that have not yet been fully explored. After an elementary introduction into conventional thermoelectrics and spintronics, we give a brief review of the physics of spin caloritronics. We discuss spin-dependent thermoelectrics based on the the two-current model in metallic magnets as well as the spin Seebeck and Peltier effects that are based on spin wave excitations in ferromagnets. We derive expressions for the efficiency and figure of merit ZT of several spin caloritronic devices.