Local spin Seebeck imaging with scanning thermal probe

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to locally image the spin Seebeck effect using a scanning thermal probe, enabling nanoscale characterization of spin caloritronic materials and their magnetisation textures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental technique combining local thermal probing with magnetic imaging to resolve the spin Seebeck effect at the nanoscale.

Findings

Successful local resolution of the spin Seebeck effect in Pt/YIG samples.

Model validation showing good agreement with experimental data.

Correlation of spin Seebeck imaging with magnetisation textures via MFM.

Abstract

In this work we present the results of an experiment to locally resolve the spin Seebeck effect in a high-quality Pt/YIG sample. We achieve this by employing a locally heated scanning thermal probe to generate a highly local non-equilibrium spin current. To support our experimental results, we also present a model based on the non-equilibrium thermodynamic approach which is in a good agreement with experimental findings. To further corroborate our results, we index the locally resolved spin Seebeck effect with that of the local magnetisation texture by MFM and correlate corresponding regions. We hypothesise that this technique allows imaging of magnetisation textures within the magnon diffusion length and hence characterisation of spin caloritronic materials at the nanoscale.