Transverse thermopower effects in 03-type nanocomposites

The aim of the project is the preparation of nanocomposites capable to generate electrical energy by means of transverse thermoelectric effects, in particular the recently experimentally confirmed spin Seebeck effect (SSE). This effect consists of spin current generation by temperature gradient applied across a thin magnet and the conversion of it to electrical current by means of the inverse spin Hall effect in the attached metallic layer. Proposed device will have nanocomposite character formed by ferrimagnetic cores (FM) coated with a thin layer of non-magnetic metal (NM). Due to alternation of FM and NM materials at nanoscale and connection of NM layers in parallel, the nanocomposites will solve two obstructions which limit the use of SSE for effective thermoelectric conversion: the high resistance of the thin NM layer and the small usable volume of FM caused by the short propagation of the spin current. The starting FM will be magnetite Fe3O4 which has presently the best SSE performance and our team has long-standing experience with its preparation in the form of nanoparticles.