A thermal gradient as the driving force for spin currents plays a key role in spin caloritronics. In this field the spin Seebeck effect (SSE) is of major interest and was investigated in terms of in-plane thermal gradients inducing perpendicular spin currents (transverse SSE) and out-of-plane thermal gradients generating parallel spin currents (longitudinal SSE). Up to now all spincaloric experiments employ a spatially fixed thermal gradient. Thus, anisotropic measurements with respect to well defined crystallographic directions were not possible. Here we introduce a new experiment that allows not only the in-plane rotation of the external magnetic field, but also the rotation of an in-plane thermal gradient controlled by optical temperature detection. As a consequence, the anisotropic magnetothermopower and the planar Nernst effect in a permalloy thin film can be measured simultaneously. Thus, the angular dependence of the magnetothermopower with respect to the magnetization direction reveals a phase shift, that allows the quantitative separation of the thermopower, the anisotropic magnetothermopower and the planar Nernst effect.Adding the spin degree of freedom to conventional charge-based electronics opens the field of spintronics 1,2 with promising advantages such as decreased electric power consumption and increased integration densities. While spinelectronics use only voltages as driving force for currents, thermal gradients and the interaction between spins and heat currents have already been shown to provide new effects. Spin caloritronics investigate these interactions and promotes the search for applications such as heat sensors or waste heat recyclers 3,4 , that can improve thermoelectric devices.One of the most important and well established phenomena in spin caloritronics is the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect (LSSE) [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] , which uses typically out-of-plane thermal gradients in magnetic thin films for the generation of a spin current parallel to the thermal gradient. This pure spin current is then injected into an adjacent non-magnetic conductor with high spin-orbit coupling, e.g. Pt, which transforms the spin current into an electric voltage via the inverse spin Hall effect (ISHE). In very recent investigations, the LSSE was even detected without any Pt and ISHE by the use of the anomalous Hall effect in Au 12 and by time-resolved magnetooptic Kerr effect in Au and Cu 13 . Besides the application of an out-of-plane thermal gradient, effects driven by in-plane thermal gradients were also investigated. The transverse spin Seebeck effect (TSSE), the spin current generation perpendicular to an in-plane thermal gradient, was reported for metals 14 , semiconductors 15 and insulators 16 . However, it has been noted that TSSE experiments in metals and semiconductors can be influenced by parasitic effects like the planar

Transverse magneto-thermoelectric effects are studied in permalloy thin films grown on MgO substrates. We find that small parasitic magnetic fields below 1 Oe can produce artifacts of the order of 1% of the amplitude of the anisotropic magneto-thermopower which is also detected in the experiments. The measured artifacts reveal a new source of uncertainties for the detection of the transverse spin Seebeck effect. Taking these results into account we conclude that the contribution of the transverse spin Seebeck effect to the detected voltages is below the noise level of 20 nV.

The piezoelectric cold plasma generators (PCPG) allow for production of the piezoelectric direct discharge (PDD), which is a kind of cold atmospheric pressure plasma (APP). The subjects of this study are different arrays of PCPGs for large-area treatment of planar substrates. Two limiting factors are crucial for design of such arrays: (i) the parasitic coupling between PCPGs resulting in minimum allowed distance between devices, and (ii) the homogeneity of large area treatment, requiring an overlap of the activation zones resulting from each PCPG. The first limitation is investigated by the use of electric measurements. The minimum distance for operation of 4 cm between two PCPGs is determined by measurement of the energy coupling from an active PCPG to a passive one. The capacitive probe is used to evaluate the interference between signals generated by two neighboring PCPGs. The second limitation is examined by activation image recording (AIR). Two application examples illustrate the compromising these two limiting factors: the treatment of large area planar substrates by PCPG array, and the pretreatment of silicon wafers with an array of PCPG driven dielectric barrier discharges (DBD).