A mono-material Nernst thermopile with hermaphroditic legs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel mono-material Nernst thermopile using hermaphroditic legs made from Mn$_3$Sn, leveraging the anomalous Nernst effect in topological magnets to improve efficiency and simplify design.

Contribution

It presents a new thermopile design with hermaphroditic legs from a single material, replacing traditional P and N thermocouples, and exploits magnetic properties for enhanced performance.

Findings

Successful design and construction of the thermopile.

Utilization of large lag angle for improved thermoelectric response.

Potential for increased efficiency and simplified manufacturing.

Abstract

A large transverse thermoelectric response, known as anomalous Nernst effect (ANE) has been recently observed in several topological magnets. Building a thermopile employing this effect has been the subject of several recent propositions. Here, we design and build a thermopile with an array of tilted adjacent crystals of Mn$_3$Sn. The design employs a single material and replaces pairs of P and N thermocouples of the traditional design with hermaphroditic legs. The design exploits the large lag angle between the applied field and the magnetization, which we attribute to the interruption of magnetic octupoles at the edge of $xy$-plane. Eliminating extrinsic contacts between legs will boost the efficiency, simplify the process and pave the way for a new generation of thermopiles.