Spin Caloritronics in Two-Dimensional Materials

Spin caloritronics explores the coupling between spin and heat currents, aiming to harness thermal gradients to generate, manipulate and detect spin flows. Two-dimensional materials offer exceptional tunability of electronic band structure, magnetic order and interfacial coupling, making them ideal platforms to investigate and exploit thermospin phenomena. Atomically thin lattices such as graphene, silicene and transition-metal dichalcogenides combine strong spin–orbit interactions with low thermal mass, yielding pronounced spin-dependent Seebeck effects, spin filtering and negative differential thermoelectric resistance. Advances in fabrication and external field control have enabled room-temperature operation of pure spin currents, magnetic thermoresistors and multifunctional heterostructures, laying the groundwork for low-power logic, sensing and energy-harvesting technologies on flexible, nanoscale architectures.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated that engineered vacancies in lateral graphene–silicene nanoribbon junctions can produce nearly perfect thermal spin filtering, achieving spin polarisation efficiencies approaching 100 per cent while suppressing charge transport. By combining ferromagnetic exchange fields with precise defect arrangements, these systems reveal large spin-dependent Seebeck coefficients and negative differential thermoelectric resistance, highlighting pathways to switchable thermal spin valves. In related work, proximity-induced exchange and external electric fields in hybrid graphene–silicene ribbons have been shown to generate pure thermal spin currents with zero net charge flow at room temperature. Such heterostructures exhibit tunable threshold temperatures for spin conduction and robust spin filtering, indicating strong potential for low-energy-consumption spin caloritronic devices.

Spin Caloritronics in Two-Dimensional Materials publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in spin caloritronics in two-dimensional materials across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Spin caloritronics: The field studying interactions between spin currents and heat flow in materials.

Two-dimensional materials: Atomically thin crystals with unique electronic, thermal and magnetic properties.

Spin-dependent Seebeck effect: Generation of spin voltage or spin current in response to a temperature gradient.

Thermal spin current: A flow of spin angular momentum driven by thermal rather than electrical means.

Spin-filtering effect: Preferential transmission of one spin orientation over the other, yielding high spin polarisation.

Negative differential thermoelectric resistance: A regime where increasing temperature difference reduces thermoelectric current.

References

1. Vacancy tuned thermoelectric properties and high spin filtering performance in graphene/silicene heterostructures. Scientific Reports (2021).
2. Pure thermal spin current and perfect spin-filtering with negative differential thermoelectric resistance induced by proximity effect in graphene/silicene junctions. Scientific Reports (2021).
3. Low energy dissipation readout of single-molecule ferroelectronic states by a spin-Seebeck signal. Physical Review Research (2020).
4. Computational Study of Metal‐Free Magnetism and Spin‐Dependent Seebeck Effect in Silicene Nanoribbons with Zigzag and Klein Edges. Advances in Condensed Matter Physics (2022).