Creation of flexible spin-caloritronic material with giant transverse thermoelectric conversion by nanostructure engineering.

Functional materials such as magnetic, thermoelectric, and battery materials have been revolutionized through nanostructure engineering. However, spin caloritronics, an advancing field based on spintronics and thermoelectrics with fundamental physics studies, has focused only on uniform materials without complex microstructures. Here, we show how nanostructure engineering enables transforming simple magnetic alloys into spin-caloritronic materials displaying significantly large transverse thermoelectric conversion properties. The anomalous Nernst effect, a promising transverse thermoelectric phenomenon for energy harvesting and heat sensing, has been challenging to utilize due to the scarcity of materials with large anomalous Nernst coefficients. We demonstrate a remarkable ~ 70% improvement in the anomalous Nernst coefficients (reaching ~ 3.7 µVK-1) and a significant ~ 200% enhancement in the power factor (reaching ~ 7.7 µWm-1K-2) in flexible Fe-based amorphous materials by nanostructure engineering without changing their composition. This surpasses all reported amorphous alloys and is comparable to single crystals showing large anomalous Nernst effect. The enhancement is attributed to Cu nano-clustering, facilitating efficient transverse thermoelectric conversion. This discovery advances the materials science of spin caloritronics, opening new avenues for designing high-performance transverse thermoelectric devices for practical applications.

Measurement of local thermal contact resistance with a periodic heating method using microscale lock-in thermography.

This study proposes a new method for measuring thermal contact resistance using lock-in thermography. By using lock-in thermography with an infrared microscope, the dynamic and spatially resolved temperature behavior of the contact interface was visualized on a microscale with one measurement. In addition, a new thermal contact resistance measurement principle was constructed after solving the three-dimensional thermal conduction equation in the cylindrical coordinates by considering a periodic heat source with a Gaussian intensity distribution and the relative position of the heating point to the sample edge, in the presence of thermal resistance at the contact interface. Consequently, the discontinuous behaviors of the temperature wave, amplitude, and phase lag at the contact interface were observed on a microscale. From that discontinuity, the local thermal contact resistance was analyzed as a fitting parameter by matching the theoretical curve to the measured amplitude and phase lag. Furthermore, the simultaneous analysis of the material thermal diffusivity was demonstrated and the validity of the measurements was confirmed.