Spin and charge thermopower effects in the ferromagnetic graphene junction
Javad Vahedi, Fattaneh Barimani
备注：
8 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Journal of Applied Physics. [v3] Some typos have been fixed. [v4] One paragraph added to describe Fig.6
Using wave function matching approach and employing the Landauer-Buttiker formula a ferromagnetic graphene junction with a temperature gradient across the system, is studied. We calculate the thermally induced charge and spin current as well as the thermoelectric voltage (Seebeck effect) in the linear and nonlinear regimes. Our calculation revealed that due to the electron-hole symmetry, the charge Seebeck coefficient is, for an undoped magnetic graphene, an odd function of chemical potential while the spin Seebeck coefficient is an even function regardless of the temperature gradient and junction length. We have also found with an accurate tuning external parameter, namely the exchange filed and gate voltage, the temperature gradient across the junction drives a pure spin current without accompanying the charge current. Another important characteristic of thermoelectric transport, thermally induced current in the nonlinear regime, is examined. It would be our main finding that with increasing thermal gradient applied to the junction the spin and charge thermovoltages decrease and even become zero for non-zero temperature bias.
In the present work we theoretically study the length dependence of thermopower of a single-molecule junction with a chain-like molecular bridge of an arbitrary length using a tight-binding model. We analyze conditions bringing a nonlinear growth of the thermopower accompanying the extension of the bridge length. Also, we show that the thermopower may decrease with increasing molecular length provided that the molecular bridge is sufficiently long.
Thermally induced spin-dependent transport across magnetic tunnel junctions is theoretically investigated. We analyze the thermal analog of Slonczewski's model (as well as its limiting case---Julliere's model) of tunneling magnetoresistance and obtain analytical expressions for the junction thermopower and the tunneling magneto-thermopower (TMT). The analytical model is tested numerically for the special case of an Al$_2$O$_3$-based MTJ, for which we analyze the dependence of the thermopower and TMT on the relative magnetization orientations, as well as on the barrier height and thickness. We …
We report a theoretical study of the thermopower of single-molecule junctions, with focus on phenyl-based molecular junctions. In contrast to prior studies, thermal fluctuations of the torsional angle between the phenyl rings and variations in the position of the molecular level alignment with respect to the electrode Fermi energy were both taken into account. Full thermopower histograms were obtained, and their dependence on the magnitude of the fluctuations was studied. We found that at large molecular orbital variations the thermopower becomes strongly dependent on the torsion angle and can…
We study the electrical conductance $G$ and the thermopower $S$ of single-molecule junctions, and reveal signatures of different transport mechanisms: off-resonant tunneling, on-resonant coherent (ballistic) motion, and multi-step hopping. These mechanisms are identified by studying the behavior of $G$ and $S$ while varying molecular length and temperature. Based on a simple one-dimensional model for molecular junctions, we derive approximate expressions for the thermopower in these different regimes. Analytical results are compared to numerical simulations, performed using a variant of Büttik…
Thermopower measurements of molecular junctions have recently gained interest as a characterization technique that supplements the more traditional conductance measurements. Here we investigate the electronic conductance and thermopower of benzenediamine (BDA) and benzenedicarbonitrile (BDCN) connected to gold electrodes using first-principles calculations. We find excellent agreement with experiments for both molecules when exchange-correlation effects are described by the many-body GW approximation. In contrast, results from standard density functional theory (DFT) deviate from experiments b…
Thermopower of molecular junctions is sensitive to details in the junction and may increase, decrease, or saturate with increasing chain length, depending on the system. Using McConnell's theory for exponentially suppressed transport together with a simple and easily interpretable tight binding model, we show how these different behaviors depend on the molecular backbone and its binding to the contacts. We distinguish between resonances from binding groups or undercoordinated electrode atoms, and those from the periodic backbone. It is demonstrated that while the former gives a length-independ…
Helicenes are inherently chiral polyaromatic molecules composed of all-ortho fused benzene rings possessing a spring-like structure. Here, using a combination of density functional theory and tight-binding calculations, it is demonstrated that controlling the length of the helicene molecule by mechanically stretching or compressing the molecular junction can dramatically change the electronic properties of the helicene, leading to a tunable switching behavior of the conductance and thermopower of the junction with on/off ratios of several orders of magnitude. Furthermore, control over the heli…
Motivated by recent experiments [Lee et al. Nature 498, 209 (2013)], we present here a detailed theoretical analysis of the Joule heating in current-carrying single-molecule junctions. By combining the Landauer approach for quantum transport with ab initio calculations, we show how the heating in the electrodes of a molecular junction is determined by its electronic structure. In particular, we show that in general the heat is not equally dissipated in both electrodes of the junction and it depends on the bias polarity (or equivalently on the current direction). These heating asymmetries are i…
We report the first concurrent determination of conductance (G) and thermopower (S) of single-molecule junctions via direct measurement of electrical and thermoelectric currents using a scanning tunneling microscope-based break-junction technique. We explore several amine-Au and pyridine-Au linked molecules that are predicted to conduct through either the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) or the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO), respectively. We find that the Seebeck coefficient is negative for pyridine-Au linked LUMO-conducting junctions and positive for amine-Au linked HOMO…
We present a systematic ab-initio study of the length dependence of the thermopower in molecular junctions. The systems under consideration are small saturated and conjugated molecular chains of varying length attached to gold electrodes via a number of different binding groups. Different scenarios are observed: linearly increasing and decreasing thermopower as function of the chain length as well as positive and negative values for the contact thermopower. Also deviation from the linear behaviour is found. The trends can be explained by details of the transmission, in particular the presence,…
The Tunneling Anisotropic Magneto-Thermopower (TAMT) and the Tunneling Anisotropic Spin-Seebeck (TASS) effects are studied for a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) composed of a ferromagnetic electrode, a zinc-blende semiconductor and a normal metal. We develop a theoretical model for describing the dependence of a thermally induced tunneling current across the MTJ on the in-plane orientation of the magnetization in the ferromagnetic layer. The model accounts for the specific Bychkov-Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions present in these systems, which are responsible for the $C_{2v}$ sym…
In this work, we consider an open single level molecular junction with electrons coupled to a single frequency phonon mode, in which the phonons are also coupled to another heat bath. By applying a temperature gradient between the electrical leads and investigating thermocurrent in non-linear regime, it is shown that the environment can excite phonons which may result in either suppression or very significant enhancement of thermocurrent, depending on the onsite energy. Similarly, in the linear regime the effects of environment are seen in the Seebeck coefficient.
We report the observation of tunneling anisotropic magnetothermopower, a voltage response to a temperature difference across an interface between a normal and a magnetic semiconductor. The resulting voltage is related to the energy derivative of the density of states in the magnetic material, and thus has a strongly anisotropic response to the direction of magnetization in the material. The effect will have relevance to the operation of semiconductor spintronic devices, and may indeed already play a role in correctly interpreting the details of some earlier spin injection studies.
We present a model of the thermopower in a mesoscopic tunnel junction between two ferromagnetic metals based upon magnon-assisted tunneling processes. In our model, the thermopower is generated in the course of thermal equilibration between two baths of magnons, mediated by electrons. We predict a particularly large thermopower effect in the case of a junction between two half-metallic ferromagnets with antiparallel polarizations, $S_{AP} \sim - (k_B/e)$, in contrast to $S_{P} \approx 0$ for a parallel configuration.
We develop a theoretical model of magnon-assisted transport in a mesoscopic tunnel junction between a ferromagnetic metal and a normal (non-magnetic) metal. The current response to a bias voltage is dominated by the contribution of elastic processes rather than magnon-assisted processes and the degree of spin polarization of the current, parameterized by a function $P (Π_{\uparrow (\downarrow)},Π_{N})$, $0 \leq P \leq 1$, depends on the relative sizes of the majority $Π_{\uparrow}$ and minority $Π_{\downarrow}$ band Fermi surface in the ferromagnet and of the Fermi surface of the normal metal …
We have studied thermoelectric effect of a Kane-Mele normal-insulator-superconductor (KMNIS) junction at ultra-low temperatures using a modified version of the well-known Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk (BTK) theory. Since both the (electronic) charge and thermal current due to the carriers are sensitive to the strengths of the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) present in the Kane-Mele model, a tunability of this junction device with regard to its thermoelectric properties can be experimentally achieved by certain techniques that are used to manipulate the values of the spin-orbit couplings. We have computed…
We propose a possible route to achieve high thermoelectric efficiency in molecular junctions by combining a local chemical tuning of the molecular electronic states with the use of semiconducting electrodes. The former allows to control the position of the HOMO transmission resonance with respect to the Fermi energy while the latter fulfills a twofold purpose: the suppression of electron-like contributions to the thermopower and the cut-off of the HOMO transmission tails into the semiconductor band gap. As a result a large thermopower can be obtained. Our results strongly suggest that large fi…
We study theoretically the length dependence of both conductance and thermopower in metal-molecule-metal junctions made up of dithiolated oligophenylenes contacted to gold electrodes. We find that while the conductance decays exponentially with increasing molecular length, the thermopower increases linearly as suggested by recent experiments. We also analyze how these transport properties can be tuned with methyl side groups. Our results can be explained by considering the level shifts due to their electron-donating character as well as the tilt-angle dependence of conductance and thermopower.…
We present a theoretical description of the thermopower due to magnon-assisted tunneling in a mesoscopic tunnel junction between two ferromagnetic metals. The thermopower is generated in the course of thermal equilibration between two baths of magnons, mediated by electrons. For a junction between two ferromagnets with antiparallel polarizations, the ability of magnon-assisted tunneling to create thermopower $S_{AP}$ depends on the difference between the size $Π_{\uparrow, \downarrow}$ of the majority and minority band Fermi surfaces and it is proportional to a temperature dependent factor $(k…
The tunnel magneto-Seebeck effect is the dependence of the thermopower of magnetic tunnel junctions on the magnetic configuration. It is conventionally interpreted in terms of a thermoelectric generalization of the tunnel magnetoresistance. Here, we investigate the heat-driven electron transport in these junctions associated with electron-magnon scattering, using stochastic Landau-Lifshitz phenomenology and quantum kinetic theory. Our findings challenge the widely accepted single-electron picture of the tunneling thermopower in magnetic junctions.
We study thermoelectric effects in Kondo correlated quantum dot coupled to ferromagnetic electrodes by calculating conductance, thermopower and thermal conductance in the Kondo regime. We also study the effect of the asymmetry in the coupling to the leads, which has important consequences for anti-parallel magnetization configuration. We discuss the thermoelectric figure of merit, tunnel magnetoresistance and violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law in this system. The results agree with recently measured thermopower of the quantum dot defined in a two dimensional electron gas.
Employing ab-initio electronic structure calculations combined with the non-equilibrium Green's function technique, we study the dependence of the thermopower Q on the conformation in biphenyl-based single-molecule junctions. For the series of experimentally available biphenyl molecules, alkyl side chains allow us to gradually adjust the torsion angle ϕ between the two phenyl rings from 0 to 90° and to control in this way the degree of π-electron conjugation. Studying different anchoring groups and binding positions, our theory predicts that the absolute values of the thermopower decrease slig…
We study the thermopower of a quantum dot weakly coupled to two reservoirs by tunnel junctions. At low temperatures the transport through the dot is suppressed by charging effects (Coulomb blockade). As a result the thermopower shows an oscillatory dependence on the gate voltage. We study this dependence in the limit of low temperatures where the transport through the dot is dominated by the processes of inelastic cotunneling. We also obtain a crossover formula for intermediate temperatures which connects our cotunneling results to the known sawtooth behavior in the sequential tunneling regime…
We study the electric and thermoelectric transport properties of correlated quantum dots coupled to two ferromagnetic leads and one superconducting electrode. Transport through such hybrid devices depends on the interplay of ferromagnetic-contact induced exchange field, superconducting proximity effect and correlations leading to the Kondo effect. We consider the limit of large superconducting gap. The system can be then modeled by an effective Hamiltonian with a particle-non-conserving term describing the creation and annihilation of Cooper pairs. By means of the full density-matrix numerical…
We study a system composed of a quantum dot in contact with ferromagnetic leads, held at different temperatures. Spin analogues to the thermopower and thermoelectric figures of merit are defined and studied as a function of junction parameters. It is shown that in contrast to bulk ferromagnets, the spin thermopower coefficient in a junction can be as large as the Seebeck coefficient, resulting in a large spin figure of merit. In addition, it is demonstrated that the junction can be tuned to supply only spin current but no charge current. We also discuss experimental systems where our predictio…
Charge and heat transfer through a nanoscale conductor is not only determined by the transmission properties of the electrons, but can also be strongly impacted by coupling to other degrees of freedom in the environment of the conductor. Here, we analyze the influence of the electromagnetic environment on a simple, yet significant thermoelectric property, the thermopower, in the simple transport scenario of single-charge transfer across a tunnel junction. Considering both thermal and out-of-equilibrium steady-state environments, we find that the thermopower can be strongly affected by the envi…
Thermopower of graphene-superconductor (GS) junction is analyzed within the extended Blonder- Tinkham-Klapwijk formalism. Within this approach we have also calculated the temperature de- pendence of the zero-bias conductance for GS junction. Both quantities reflect quasi-relativistic nature of massless Dirac fermions in graphene. Both, the linear and the non-linear regimes are considered.
We consider a lateral hetero-junction where the left and right leads are made of monolayer graphene and the middle region is made of a gapped tilted Dirac material (borophene or quinoid graphene) illuminated with off-resonant circularly polarized radiation. The tilt parameter $v_t$ makes the band gap indirect and smaller in magnitude as compared to Dirac materials without tilt. Exposure to radiation makes the band gaps of the central region valley-dependent which show their signatures as valley polarized charge and thermal currents, thereby causing a valley Seebeck effect. We study the variati…
Molecular junctions are a versatile test bed for investigating thermoelectricity on the nanoscale1-10 and contribute to the design of new cost-effective environmentally-friendly organic thermoelectric materials11. It has been suggested that transport resonances associated with the discrete molecular levels would play a key role in the thermoelectric performance12,13, but no direct experimental evidence has been reported. Here we study single-molecule junctions of the endohedral fullerene Sc3N@C80 connected to gold electrodes using a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM). We find that the magnit…
Spin injection in metallic normal/ferromagnetic junctions is investigated taking into account the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) occurring in the ferromagnetic layer. It is shown, on the basis of a generalized two channel model, that there is an interface resistance contribution due to anisotropic scattering, beyond spin accumulation and giant magnetoresistance (GMR). The corresponding expression of the thermopower is derived and compared with the expression for the thermopower produced by the GMR. First measurements of anisotropic magnetothermopower are presented in electrodeposited Ni n…
We present a theoretical study of the conductance and thermopower of single-molecule junctions based on C60 and C60-terminated molecules. We first analyze the transport properties of gold-C60-gold junctions and show that these junctions can be highly conductive (with conductances above 0.1G0, where G0 is the quantum of conductance). Moreover, we find that the thermopower in these junctions is negative due to the fact that the LUMO dominates the charge transport, and its magnitude can reach several tens of micro-V/K, depending on the contact geometry. On the other hand, we study the suitability…
Using molecular dynamics simulations of many junction stretching processes we analyze the thermopower of silver (Ag), gold (Au), and platinum (Pt) atomic contacts. In all cases we observe that the thermopower vanishes on average within the standard deviation and that its fluctuations increase for decreasing minimum cross-section of the junctions. However, we find a suppression of the fluctuations of the thermopower for the s-valent metals Ag and Au, when the conductance originates from a single, perfectly transmitting channel. Essential features of the experimental results for Au, Ag, and copp…
Thermoelectric transport across normal-metal/helical-multiferroic/ferromagnetic heterojunctions is theoretically investigated. We find a anisotropic charge and spin thermopower with a $C_{2v}$ symmetry. The angular dependence on the magnetization orientation of the ferromagnetic layer is substantiated by a phenomenological theory based on the symmetry of the effective spin-orbit interaction induced by the topology of the spiral magnetic order in the multiferroic barrier.
We report a method using scanning tunnelling microscope single molecular break junction to simultaneously measure and correlate the single-molecule thermopower and electrical conductance. In contrast to previously reported approaches, it does not require custom-built electronics and takes advantage of a trace-by-trace calibration of the thermal offset at the Au/Au contact, thus greatly facilitating thermoelectric measurements at the single-molecule level. We report measurements of three molecules: 1,4-di(4-(ethynyl(phenylthioacetate)) benzene, 1,8-octanedithiol, and 4,4'-bipyridine, and determ…
We study spin transport in normal/ferromagnetic/normal graphene junctions where a gate electrode is attached to the ferromagnetic graphene. We find that due to the exchange field of the ferromagnetic graphene, spin current through the junctions has an oscillatory behavior with respect to the chemical potential in the ferromagnetic graphene, which can be tuned by the gate voltage. Especially, we obtain a controllable spin current reversal by the gate voltage. Our prediction of high controllability of spin transport in ferromagnetic graphene junction may contribute to the development of the spin…
We investigate the thermopower of a metal-molecule-metal junction taking into account thermal effects on the junction. Based on analytical expressions and numerical simulations we show that the thermoelectric potential reveals valuable information on the mechanisms controlling the electron transfer process, including coherent transmission and thermalized hopping. We also show that at high temperatures the position of the Fermi energy relative to the molecular states can be easily deduced from the thermoelectric potential. Standard current-voltage measurements are insensitive to this informatio…
We study the tunneling magneto thermopower and tunneling magneto thermocurrent of CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ). The devices show a clear change of the thermoelectric properties upon reversal of the magnetisation of the CoFeB layers from parallel to the antiparallel orientation. When switching from parallel to antiparallel the thermopower increases by up to 55% where as the thermocurrent drops by 45%. These observations can be well explained by the Onsager relations taking into account the tunneling magneto resistance of the MTJ. These findings contrast previous studies on Al…
We investigate the micromechanical exfoliation and van der Waals (vdW) assembly of ferromagnetic layered dichalcogenide Fe0.25TaS2. The vdW interlayer coupling at the Fe-intercalated plane of Fe0.25TaS2 allows exfoliation of flakes. A vdW junction between the cleaved crystal surfaces is constructed by dry transfer method. We observe tunnel magnetoresistance in the resulting junction under an external magnetic field applied perpendicular to the plane, demonstrating spin-polarized tunneling between the ferromagnetic layered material through the vdW junction.
We study spin-valley and lattice-pseudo spin currents in a dual ferromagnetic-gated silicene-based junction. Silicene has buckled atomic structure which allows us to take sublattice-dependent ferromagnetism into account in the investigation. One of the study results show that transmission at the junctions exhibits anisotropic property only in anti-parallel cases. Interestingly, the studied junctions can be switched from a pure spin-polarizer to a pure valley-polarizer by reversing directions of exchange fields in the parallel junctions. The perfect control of spin-valley currents can be done o…
General relations for nonequilibrium spin transport at a magnetic junction between a normal metal and a ferromagnetic insulator are derived from the quantum fluctuation theorem. They include the extended Onsager relations between the spin conductance and the spin-current noise that hold for nonequilibrium states driven by an external current. These relations, that are valid for a general setup of spin Hall magnetoresistance, provide a comprehensive viewpoint for understanding of unidirectional spin Hall magnetoresistance in insulating ferromagnetic junctions.
We investigate Josephson junctions on the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator in planar, step, and edge geometries. The elliptical nature of the Dirac cone representing the side surface states of the topological insulator results in a scaling factor in the Josephson current in a step junction as compared to the planar junction. In edge junctions, the contribution of the Andreev bound states to the Josephson current vanishes due to spin-momentum locking of the surface states. Furthermore, we consider a junction with a ferromagnetic insulator between the superconducting regions.…
We investigate charge, valley, and spin transports in normal/ferromagnetic/normal silicene junc- tion. We show that the charge, valley, and spin conductances in this junction oscillate with the length of the ferromagnetic silicene. It is also found that the current through this junction is valley and spin polarized due to the coupling between valley and spin degrees of freedom, and the valley and spin polarizations can be tuned by local application of a gate voltage. In particular, we find fully valley and spin polarized current by applying the electric field. We also obtain the condition for …
We study thermoelectric effects in Kondo correlated quantum dot coupled to ferromagnetic electrodes by calculating thermopower S in the Kondo regime as function of on-dot energy level and temperature. The system is represented by the Anderson model and the results agree well with those recently measured for a quantum dot coupled to nonmagnetic leads. For magnetic electrodes one observes marked dependence of S on the degree of their polarization.
We theoretically demonstrate a simple way to significantly enhance the spin/valley polarizations and tunnel- ing magnetoresistnace (TMR) in a ferromagnetic-normal-ferromagnetic (FNF) silicene junction by applying a circularly polarized light in off-resonant regime to the second ferromagnetic (FM) region. We show that the fully spin-polarized current can be realized in certain ranges of light intensity. Increasing the incident energy in the presence of light will induce a transition of perfect spin polarization from positive to negative or vice versa depending on magnetic configuration (paralle…
The non-equilibrium spin accumulation in ferromagnetic double barrier junctions is shown to govern the transport in small structures. Transport properties of such systems are described by a generalization of the theory of the Coulomb blockade. The spin accumulation enhances the magnetoresistance. The transient non-linear transport properties are predicted to provide a unique experimental evidence of the spin-accumulation in the form of a reversed current on time scales of the order of the spin-flip relaxation time.
We theoretically study the electron transport properties in a ferromagnetic/normal/ferromagnetic tunnel junction, which is deposited on the top of a topological surface. The conductance at the parallel (\textbf{P}) configuration can be much bigger than that at the antiparallel (\textbf{AP}) configuration. Compared \textbf{P} with \textbf{AP} configuration, there exists a shift of phase which can be tuned by gate voltage. We find that the exchange field weakly affects the conductance of carriers for \textbf{P} configuration but can dramatically suppress the conductance of carriers for \textbf{A…
The interplay between spin transport and thermoelectricity offers several novel ways of generating, manipulating, and detecting nonequilibrium spin in a wide range of materials. Here we formulate a phenomenological model in the spirit of the standard model of electrical spin injection to describe the electronic mechanism coupling charge, spin, and heat transport and employ the model to analyze several different geometries containing ferromagnetic (F) and nonmagnetic (N) regions: F, F/N, and F/N/F junctions which are subject to thermal gradients. We present analytical formulas for the spin accu…
We investigate the spin-dependent Seebeck coefficient and the tunneling magneto thermopower of CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ) in the presence of thermal gradients across the MTJ. Thermal gradients are generated by an electric heater on top of the nanopillars. The thermo power voltage across the MTJ is found to scale linearly with the heating power and reveals similar field dependence as the tunnel magnetoresistance. The amplitude of the thermal gradient is derived from calibration measurements in combination with finite element simulations of the heat flux. Based on this, larg…
Current induced magnetization dynamics in asymmetric Cu/Co/Cu single magnetic layer nanopillars has been studied experimentally at room temperature and in low magnetic fields applied perpendicular to the thin film plane. In sub-100 nm junctions produced using a nanostencil process a bistable state with two distinct resistance values is observed. Current sweeps at fixed applied fields reveal hysteretic and abrupt transitions between these two resistance states. The current induced resistance change is 0.5%, a factor of 5 greater than the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) effect. We present an…
We study the Josephson current in a junction comprising two superconductors linked by a strong ferromagnet in presence of impurities. We focus on a regime where the electron (and hole) motion is ballistic over the exchange length and diffusive on the scale of the weak link length. The current-phase relation is obtained for both two- and three dimensional ferromagnetic weak links. In the clean limit, the possibility of temperature-induced 0- transitions is demonstrated while the corresponding critical current versus temperature dependences are also studied.
Superconductor-Ferromagnetic-Superconductor (SFS) Josephson junctions are known to exhibit a transition between $π$ and 0 states. In this note we find the $π-0$ phase diagram of an SFS junction depending on the transparency of an intermediate insulating layer (I). We show that in general, the Josephson critical current is nonzero at the $π-0$ transition temperature. Contributions to the current from the two spin channels nearly compensate each other and the first harmonic of the Josephson current as a function of phase difference is suppressed. However, higher harmonics give a nonzero contribu…
We investigate charge conductance and spin and valley polarization along with the tunnelling magneto-resistance (TMR) in silicene junctions composed of normal silicene and ferromagnetic silicene. We show distinct features of the conductances for parallel and anti-parallel spin configurations and the TMR, as the ferromagnetic-normal-ferromagnetic (FNF) junction is tuned by an external electric field. We analyse the behavior of the charge conductance and valley and spin polarizations in terms of the independent conductances of the different spins at the two valleys and the band structure of ferr…
We study spin and valley transports in junctions composed of silicene and topological crystalline insulators. We consider normal/magnetic/normal Dirac metal junctions where a gate electrode is attached to the magnetic region. In normal/antiferromagnetic/normal silicene junction, we show that the current through this junction is valley and spin polarized due to the coupling between valley and spin degrees of freedom, and the valley and spin polarizations can be tuned by local application of a gate voltage. In particular, we find a fully valley and spin polarized current by applying the electric…
We investigate magnetotransport in a ferromagnetic/normal/ferromagnetic graphene junction where a gate electrode is attached to the normal segment. It is shown that the charge conductance can be maximal at an antiparallel configuration of the magnetizations. Moreover, we demonstrate that both the magnitude and the sign of the spin-transfer torque can be controlled by means of the gate voltage in the normal segment. In this way, the present system constitutes a spin-transfer torque transistor. These anomalous phenomena are attributed to the combined effect of the exchange field and the Dirac di…
Coherent quantum transport in ferromagnetic/ semiconductor/ ferromagnetic junctions is studied theoretically within the Landauer framework of ballistic transport. We show that quantum coherence can have unexpected implications for spin injection and that some intuitive spintronic concepts which are founded in semi-classical physics no longer apply: A quantum spin-valve (QSV) effect occurs even in the absence of a net spin polarized current flowing through the device, unlike in the classical regime. The converse effect also arises, i.e. a zero spin-valve signal for a non-vanishing spin-current.…
The paper addresses inelastic spin-flip tunneling accompanied by surface spin excitations (magnons) in ferromagnetic junctions. The inelastic tunneling current is proportional to the magnon density of states which is energy-independent for the surface waves and, for this reason, cannot account for the bias-voltage dependence of the observed inelastic tunneling spectra. This paper shows that the bias-voltage dependence of the tunneling spectra can arise from the tunneling matrix elements of the electron-magnon interaction. These matrix elements are derived from the Coulomb exchange interaction …
In the present work we theoretically study characteristics of nonlinear Seebeck effect in a single-molecule junction with chain-like bridge of an arbitrary length. We have employed tight-binding models to compute electron transmission trough the system. We concentrate on analysis of dependences of thermovoltage $V_{th} $ and differential thermopower $ S $ on the bridge length. It is shown that $ V_{th} $ becomes stronger and $ S $ grows as the bridge lengthens. We discuss the effects of the bridge coupling to the electrodes and of specific characteristics of terminal sites on the bridge on the…
We investigate the thermoelectric properties of a quantum dot coupled to ferromagnetic and superconducting electrodes. The combination of spin polarized tunneling at the ferromagnetic-quantum dot interface and the application of an external magnetic field that Zeeman splits the dot energy level leads to large values of the thermopower (Seebeck coefficient). Importantly, the thermopower can be tuned with an external gate voltage connected to the dot. We compute the figure of merit that measures the efficiency of thermoelectric conversion and find that it attains high values. We discuss the diff…
We demonstrate excitation of ferromagnetic resonance in CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) by the combined action of voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) and spin transfer torque (ST). Our measurements reveal that GHz-frequency VCMA torque and ST in low-resistance MTJs have similar magnitudes, and thus that both torques are equally important for understanding high-frequency voltage-driven magnetization dynamics in MTJs. As an example, we show that VCMA can increase the sensitivity of an MTJ-based microwave signal detector to the sensitivity level of semiconductor Schottk…
