Magnon transport and thermoelectric effects in ultrathin Tm3Fe5O12/Pt nonlocal devices

The possibility of electrically exciting and detecting magnon currents in magnetic insulators has opened exciting perspectives for transporting spin information in electronic devices. However, the role of the magnetic field and the nonlocal thermal gradients on the magnon transport remain unclear. Here, by performing nonlocal harmonic voltage measurements, we investigate magnon transport in perpendicularly magnetized ultrathin Tm3Fe5O12 (TmIG) films coupled to Pt electrodes. We show that the first harmonic nonlocal voltage captures spin-driven magnon transport in TmIG, as expected, and the second harmonic is dominated by thermoelectric voltages driven by current-induced thermal gradients at the detector. The magnon diffusion length in TmIG is found to be lambda m -0.3 mu m at 0.5 T and gradually decays to lambda m -0.2 mu m at 0.8 T, which we attribute to the suppression of the magnon relaxation time due to the increase of the Gilbert damping with field. By performing current-, magnetic field-, and distance-dependent nonlocal and local measurements we demonstrate that the second harmonic nonlocal voltage exhibits five thermoelectric contributions, which originate from the nonlocal spin Seebeck effect and the ordinary, planar, spin, and anomalous Nernst effects. Our work provides a guide on how to disentangle magnon signals from diverse thermoelectric voltages of spin and magnetic origin in nonlocal magnon devices, and establish the scaling laws of the thermoelectric voltages in metal/insulator bilayers.

Automated summary

By using nonlocal harmonic voltage measurements, the researchers investigated magnon transport in perpendicularly magnetized ultrathin Tm3Fe5O12 (TmIG) films coupled to Pt electrodes. They found that the first harmonic nonlocal voltage captures spin-driven magnon transport, while the second harmonic is dominated by thermoelectric voltages driven by current-induced thermal gradients at the detector. The researchers also determined the magnon diffusion length and the different components of the thermoelectric voltages in TmIG.