Magneto-Seebeck effect and electron-magnon scattering

The aim of the project is the investigation the magneto-Seebeck effect which is the change of the thermopower of a molecular junction or a planar junction consisting of two ferro-magnetic leads separated by either a molecule or a metallic spacer layer. The idea is that the electronic structure of the molecule or the metallic spacer layer can be manipulated by the relative orientation of the lead magnetization. The expected effect is a sign change of the Seebeck coefficient which would mean that the direction of the heat current could be manipulated by an external magnetic field. The effect will be investigated by ab initio elec-tronic structure calculations based on density functional theory. The transport properties are calculated in the coherent limit based on Landauer theory or in the diffusive limit based on the Boltzmann equation taking into account damping by electron-magnon interaction.