• 文献标题:   Giant room-temperature spin caloritronics in spin-semiconducting graphene nanoribbons
  • 文献类型:   Article
  • 作  者:   CHEN XB, LIU YZ, GU BL, DUAN WH, LIU F
  • 作者关键词:  
  • 出版物名称:   PHYSICAL REVIEW B
  • ISSN:   1098-0121 EI 1550-235X
  • 通讯作者地址:   Tsinghua Univ
  • 被引频次:   49
  • DOI:   10.1103/PhysRevB.90.121403
  • 出版年:   2014

▎ 摘  要

Spin caloritronics refers to generating spin current by thermal gradient. Here we report a theoretical study demonstrating giant spin caloritronic effects in a new class of materials, called spin semiconductors, which are characterized with a "spin gap," the energy gap between spin-up and -down channels. Generally, spin Seebeck coefficient (S-s) is shown to increase linearly with the spin gap. Specifically, unprecedented large S-s similar to 3.4 mV/K and spin figure of merit Z(s)T similar to 119 were found in spin-semiconducting graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with sawtooth (ST) zigzag edges, based on first-principles calculations. Such giant spin caloritronic effects are shown to originate from a large spin gap of ST GNRs, in addition to two other spin-independent features of large band gap and narrow bandwidth which are commonly known for good thermoelectric materials. Our studies suggest that spin-semiconducting nanostructures, such as ST GNRs, are promising candidates for room-temperature spin caloritronics with high efficiency.