AIP Advances (May 2015)

Observation of longitudinal spin-Seebeck effect in cobalt-ferrite epitaxial thin films

  • Tomohiko Niizeki,
  • Takashi Kikkawa,
  • Ken-ichi Uchida,
  • Mineto Oka,
  • Kazuya Z. Suzuki,
  • Hideto Yanagihara,
  • Eiji Kita,
  • Eiji Saitoh

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4916978
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 5
pp. 053603 – 053603-6

Abstract

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The longitudinal spin-Seebeck effect (LSSE) has been investigated in cobalt ferrite (CFO), an exceptionally hard magnetic spinel ferrite. A bilayer of a polycrystalline Pt and an epitaxially-strained CFO(110) exhibiting an in-plane uniaxial anisotropy was prepared by reactive rf sputtering technique. Thermally generated spin voltage in the CFO layer was measured via the inverse spin-Hall effect in the Pt layer. External-magnetic-field (H) dependence of the LSSE voltage (VLSSE) in the Pt/CFO(110) sample with H ∥ [001] was found to exhibit a hysteresis loop with a high squareness ratio and high coercivity, while that with H ∥ [ 1 1 ̄ 0 ] shows a nearly closed loop, reflecting the different anisotropies induced by the epitaxial strain. The magnitude of VLSSE has a linear relationship with the temperature difference (ΔT), giving the relatively large VLSSE /ΔT of about 3 μV/K for CFO(110) which was kept even at zero external field.