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Title: Length Scale of the Spin Seebeck Effect

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [3];  [3];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [2];  [1]
  1. Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz (Germany)
  2. Univ. of Konstanz, Konstanz (Germany)
  3. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  4. Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern (Germany); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Lemont, IL (United States)
  5. Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern (Germany)

We study the origin of the spin Seebeck effect in yttrium iron garnet (YIG) samples for film thicknesses from 20 nm to 50 μm at room temperature and 50 K. Our results exhibit a characteristic increase of the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect amplitude with the thickness of the insulating ferrimagnetic YIG, which levels off at a critical thickness that increases with decreasing temperature. The observed behavior cannot be explained as an interface effect or by variations of the material parameters. Comparison to numerical simulations of thermal magnonic spin currents yields qualitative agreement for the thickness dependence resulting from the finite magnon propagation length. This allows us to trace the origin of the observed signals to genuine bulk magnonic spin currents due to the spin Seebeck effect ruling out an interface origin and allowing us to gauge the reach of thermally excited magnons in this system for different temperatures. At low temperature, even quantitative agreement with the simulations is found.

Research Organization:
Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC); Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0001299; FG02-09ER46577
OSTI ID:
1371003
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1213287
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 9; Related Information: S3TEC partners with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (lead); Boston College; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; ISSN 0031-9007
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 140 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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  • Lauer, V.; Jungfleisch, M. B.; Neb, R.
  • 2014 IEEE International Conference on Oxide Materials for Electronic Engineering (OMEE), International Conference on Oxide Materials for Electronic Engineering - fabrication, properties and applications (OMEE-2014) https://doi.org/10.1109/omee.2014.6912363
conference May 2014
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Gigantic enhancement of spin Seebeck effect by phonon drag text January 2010
Spin Hall Magnetoresistance Induced by a Non-Equilibrium Proximity Effect text January 2012
Time resolved spin Seebeck effect experiments text January 2013
Enhancement of Pure Spin Currents in Spin Pumping Y3Fe5O12/Cu/metal Trilayers through Spin Conductance Matching text January 2014
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Cited By (54)

On the Role of Interfaces on Spin Transport in Magnetic Insulator/Normal Metal Heterostructures journal May 2019
Origin of the spin Seebeck effect in compensated ferrimagnets journal February 2016
Observation of spin Seebeck contribution to the transverse thermopower in Ni-Pt and MnBi-Au bulk nanocomposites journal December 2016
Photo-spin-voltaic effect journal April 2016
Magnon detection using a ferroic collinear multilayer spin valve journal March 2018
Femtosecond formation dynamics of the spin Seebeck effect revealed by terahertz spectroscopy journal July 2018
Interfacial Origin of the Magnetisation Suppression of Thin Film Yttrium Iron Garnet journal September 2017
Roles of bulk and surface magnetic anisotropy on the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect of Pt/YIG journal October 2017
Research Update: Utilizing magnetization dynamics in solid-state thermal energy conversion journal October 2016
Spin Seebeck effect and thermal spin galvanic effect in Ni 80 Fe 20 /p-Si bilayers journal January 2018
Spin Seebeck effect in ɛ -Fe 2 O 3 thin films with high coercive field journal December 2018
Vectorial observation of the spin Seebeck effect in epitaxial NiFe 2 O 4 thin films with various magnetic anisotropy contributions journal June 2019
Spin Seebeck effect in insulating SrFeO 3−δ films journal June 2019
Magnetic field dependence of the nonlocal spin Seebeck effect in Pt/YIG/Pt systems at low temperatures journal January 2020
Magnon and phonon thermometry with inelastic light scattering journal February 2018
Spin Seebeck effect in a simple ferromagnet near T c : a Ginzburg–Landau approach journal March 2018
Spin transport across antiferromagnets induced by the spin Seebeck effect journal March 2018
Magnon diffusion theory for the spin Seebeck effect in ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic insulators journal April 2018
Enhanced thermo-spin effects in iron-oxide/metal multilayers journal May 2018
Spin Seebeck effect and ballistic transport of quasi-acoustic magnons in room-temperature yttrium iron garnet films journal May 2018
Pure spin currents in magnetically ordered insulator/normal metal heterostructures journal July 2018
Microscopic origin of subthermal magnons and the spin Seebeck effect journal May 2016
Reconstruction of an effective magnon mean free path distribution from spin Seebeck measurements in thin films journal January 2017
Long lifetime of thermally excited magnons in bulk yttrium iron garnet journal October 2019
Transient response of the spin Peltier effect revealed by lock-in thermoreflectance measurements journal January 2020
Thermally induced magnon accumulation in two-sublattice magnets journal February 2017
Damping of parametrically excited magnons in the presence of the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect journal April 2017
Spin transport in multilayer systems with fully epitaxial NiO thin films journal July 2018
Boltzmann approach to the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect journal October 2018
Magnon Pairs and Spin-Nematic Correlation in the Spin Seebeck Effect journal September 2019
Strongly extended diffusion length for the nonequilibrium magnons in Y 3 F e 5 O 12 by photoexcitation journal May 2018
Magnetic properties and domain structure of ultrathin yttrium iron garnet/Pt bilayers journal March 2019
Maximization of ferromagnetism in LaCo O 3 films by competing symmetry journal November 2019
Influence of Thickness and Interface on the Low-Temperature Enhancement of the Spin Seebeck Effect in YIG Films journal July 2016
Role of damping in spin Seebeck effect in yttrium iron garnet thin films journal April 2017
Femtosecond formation dynamics of the spin Seebeck effect revealed by terahertz spectroscopy. text January 2018
Spin transport across antiferromagnets induced by the spin Seebeck effect text January 2018
Magnon detection using a ferroic collinear multilayer spin valve text January 2018
Microscopic origin of subthermal magnons and the spin Seebeck effect text January 2016
Temperature dependence of the magnon spin diffusion length and magnon spin conductivity in the magnetic insulator yttrium iron garnet text January 2016
Magnon Polarons in the Spin Seebeck Effect text January 2016
Influence of yttrium iron garnet thickness and heater opacity on the nonlocal transport of electrically and thermally excited magnons text January 2016
Thermally induced magnon accumulation in two-sublattice magnets text January 2016
Evidence for the role of the magnon energy relaxation length in the Spin Seebeck Effect text January 2017
Thermally Driven Long Range Magnon Spin Currents in Yttrium Iron Garnet due to Intrinsic Spin Seebeck Effect text January 2017
Criteria for accurate determination of the magnon relaxation length from the nonlocal spin Seebeck effect text January 2017
Spin transport in multilayer systems with fully epitaxial NiO thin films text January 2018
Spin Seebeck effect and ballistic transport of quasi-acoustic magnons in room-temperature yttrium iron garnet films text January 2018
Spin transport across antiferromagnets induced by the spin Seebeck effect text January 2018
Spin Seebeck effect in a simple ferromagnet near Tc: A Ginzburg-Landau approach text January 2018
Boltzmann approach to the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect text January 2018
Magnon-phonon interactions in magnetic insulators text January 2019
Magnon Pairs and Spin-Nematic Correlation in the Spin-Seebeck Effect text January 2019
Transient response of spin Peltier effect revealed by lock-in thermoreflectance measurement text January 2019

Figures / Tables (5)