Cost-Effective Experimental Setup for Studies of Spin Seebeck Effect and Electrical Transport in Thermoelectric Materials

In this article, we report on the design of a low-cost, accurate, and easy-to-implement room-temperature experimental setup to comprehensively study the spin Seebeck effect (SSE) in ferrimagnetic insulators (FIs). Neodymium permanent magnets (NdPMs) are used to generate a fixed uniform magnetic field while the sample is staged in a custom-designed vacuum chamber containing thermal baths (for generating the required temperature gradient) and a complete 360° sample rotation mechanism (for studying the magnetic field angle dependence). Our experiments reveal excellent magnetic field uniformity (±1%) formed between the magnet poles, a highly accurate temperature gradient stability (±1%), and excellent agreement of the longitudinal SSE (LSSE) response for the Pt/YIG structure studied here with those reported in the literature. We also measure the anomalous Nernst effect (ANE) exhibited in a graphite sample, demonstrating the capability of our setup to accurately measure this parameter. Finally, we demonstrate that our setup can also be used to measure the conventional Seebeck effect (SE) and the electrical resistivity of commercially obtained Bi 2 Te 3 samples, making it a versatile tool for the broad characterization of thermoelectric materials.