Enhancement of thermoelectric effect in diffusive superconducting bilayers with magnetic interfaces

Abstract

We demonstrate that thermoelectric currents in superconducting bilayers with a spin-active interface are controlled by the two competing processes. On one hand, spin-sensitive quasiparticle scattering at such interface generates electron-hole imbalance and yields orders-of-magnitude enhancement of the thermoelectric effect in the system. On the other hand, this electron-hole imbalance gets suppressed in the superconductor bulk due to electron scattering on non-magnetic impurities. As a result, large thermoelectric currents can only flow in the vicinity of the spin-active interface and decay away from this interface at a distance exceeding the electron elastic mean free path $\ell$. The magnitude of the thermoelectric effect reaches its maximum provided $\ell$ becomes of order of the total bilayer thickness.

6 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Nonlocal Thermoelectric Effects and Nonlocal Onsager Relations in a Three-Terminal Proximity-Coupled Superconductor-Ferromagnet Device
• Theory of a large thermoeffect in superconductors doped with magnetic impurities
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Large thermoelectric effect in ballistic Andreev interferometers
• Diffusive superconductors beyond Usadel approximation: Electron-hole asymmetry and large photoelectric effect
• Complete magnetic control over the superconducting thermoelectric effect
• Nonlinear electric and thermoelectric Andreev transport through a hybrid quantum dot coupled to ferromagnetic and superconducting leads
• Phase-coherent thermoelectricity in superconducting hybrids (Brief Review)