Giant spin Seebeck effect in a non-magnetic material

The spin Seebeck effect is observed when a thermal gradient applied to a spin-polarized material leads to a spatially varying transverse spin current in an adjacent non-spin-polarized material, where it gets converted into a measurable voltage. It has been previously observed with a magnitude of microvolts per kelvin in magnetically ordered materials, ferromagnetic metals(1), semiconductors(2) and insulators(3). Here we describe a signal in a non-magnetic semiconductor (InSb) that has the hallmarks of being produced by the spin Seebeck effect, but is three orders of magnitude larger (millivolts per kelvin). We refer to the phenomenon that produces it as the giant spin Seebeck effect. Quantizing magnetic fields spin-polarize conduction electrons in semiconductors by means of Zeeman splitting, which spin-orbit coupling amplifies by a factor of similar to 25 in InSb. We propose that the giant spin Seebeck effect is mediated by phonon-electron drag, which changes the electrons' momentum and directly modifies the spin-splitting energy through spin-orbit interactions. Owing to the simultaneously strong phonon-electron drag and spin-orbit coupling in InSb, the magnitude of the giant spin Seebeck voltage is comparable to the largest known classical thermopower values.