Moving spins with heat: Prospects for thermally powered spintronics

The new field of spin caloritronics¹ focuses on recently discovered spin-thermal transport effects, which can be separated into the two general areas of thermal transport due to spin, and vice versa, spin transport due to heat. Examples of the former include magnon thermal conductivity and the spin-Peltier effect, while the latter is exemplified by thermally-induced spin injection and the spin-Seebeck effect. Here, we consider the general possibility of using waste heat to power spintronic devices by incorporating thermal spin injection into a specific spin-based device.