Anomalous Nernst Effect-Based Near-Field Imaging of Magnetic Nanostructures

The anomalous Nernst effect (ANE) gives rise to an electrical response transverse to magnetization and an applied temperature gradient in a magnetic metal. A nanoscale temperature gradient can be generated by the use of a laser beam applied to the apex of an atomic force microscope tip, thereby allowing for spatially resolved ANE measurements beyond the optical diffraction limit. Such a method has been previously used to map in-plane magnetized magnetic textures. However, the spatial distribution of the out-of-plane temperature gradient, which is needed to fully interpret such ANE-based imaging, was not studied. We therefore use a well-known magnetic texture, a magnetic vortex core, to demonstrate the reliability of the ANE method for imaging of magnetic domains with nanoscale resolution. Moreover, since the ANE signal is directly proportional to the temperature gradient, we can also consider the inverse problem and deduce information about the nanoscale temperature distribution. Our results together with finite element modeling indicate that besides the out-of-plane temperature gradients there are even larger in-plane temperature gradients. Thus, we extend the ANE imaging to study the out-of-plane magnetization in a racetrack nanowire by detecting the ANE signal generated by in-plane temperature gradients. In all cases, a spatial resolution of ≈70 nm is obtained. These results are significant for the rapidly growing field of thermoelectric imaging of antiferromagnetic spintronic device structures.