Abstract
A large anomalous Nernst effect is essential for thermoelectric energy-harvesting in the transverse geometry without external magnetic field. It’s often connected with anomalous Hall effect, especially when electronic Berry curvature is believed to be the driving force. This approach implicitly assumes the same symmetry for the Nernst and Hall coefficients, which is however not necessarily true. Here we report a large anomalous Nernst effect in antiferromagnetic SrIr0.8Sn0.2O3 that defies the antisymmetric constraint on the anomalous Hall effect imposed by the Onsager reciprocal relation. The observed spontaneous Nernst thermopower quickly reaches the sub-μV/K level below the Néel transition around 250 K, which is comparable with many topological antiferromagnetic semimetals and far excels other magnetic oxides. Our analysis indicates that the coexistence of significant symmetric and antisymmetric contributions plays a key role, pointing to the importance of extracting both contributions and a new pathway to enhanced anomalous Nernst effect for transverse thermoelectrics.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2888 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2025 |
Funding
J.L. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DMR-1848269 and the Office of Naval Research (Grant No. N00014-20-1-2809). J.Y. acknowledges funding from the State of Tennessee and Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) through their support of the Center for Materials Processing. S.Z. is supported by the Leibniz Association through the Leibniz Competition Project No. J200/2024. D.C. is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant No. DE-SC0020254. L.H. acknowledges the support by the MGML infrastructure (project no. LM2023065). Use of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. DOE, OS by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This work is based on research conducted at the Center for High-Energy X-ray Sciences (CHEXS), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (BIO, ENG and MPS Directorates) under award DMR-1829070 and DMR-2342336. Y.Z. is supported by the Max Planck Partner lab for quantum materials from Max Planck Institute Chemical Physics of Solids.