Thermoelectric properties of a ferromagnet-superconductor hybrid junction: Role of interfacial Rashba spin-orbit interaction

Abstract

We investigate thermoelectric properties of a ferromagnet-superconductor hybrid structure with Rashba spin-orbit interaction and delta function potential barrier at the interfacial layer. The exponential rise of thermal conductance with temperature manifests a crossover temperature scale separating two opposite behaviors of it with the change of polarization in the ferromagnet whereas the inclusion of an interfacial Rashba spin-orbit field results in a nonmonotonic behavior of it with the strength of the Rashba field. We employ scattering matrix approach to determine the amplitudes of all the scattering processes possible at the interface to explain the thermoelectric properties of the device. We examine Seebeck effect and show that higher thermopower can be achieved when the polarization of the ferromagnet tends towards the half-metallic limit. It can be enhanced even for lower polarization in the presence of the finite potential barrier. In the presence of interfacial Rashba spin-orbit interaction, the Seebeck coefficient rises with the increase of barrier strength and polarization at weak or moderate interfacial Rashba field. From the application perspective, we compute the figure of merit and show that zT∼4–5 with higher polarization of the ferromagnet both in absence and presence of weak or moderate Rashba spin-orbit interaction along with the scalar potential barrier.

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