Spin current draining effect on heat-driven spin transport*

As a non-magnetic heavy metal is attached to a ferromagnet, a vertically flowing heat-driven spin current is converted to a transverse electric voltage, which is known as the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect. If the ferromagnet is a metal, this voltage is also accompanied by voltages from two other sources, i.e. the anomalous Nernst effect in both the ferromagnet and the proximity-induced ferromagnetic boundary layer. In this work, we have investigated these phenomena in NiFe/Cu/heavy metal multilayer structure. By identifying and carefully separating those effects, we find that in this pure spin current circuit the additional spin current drawn by the heavy metal generates another voltage in the ferromagnetic metal via the inverse spin Hall effect.