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

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∥[11̄0] 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.