Thermopower measurements in magnetic fields up to 17 tesla using the toggled heating method

A de method for thermopower (TP) measurements in magnetic fields up to 17 T in the temperature range from 3 K to 300 K is introduced. A special heating technique named ''seesaw heating,'' a method similar to ac methods, was developed and resulted in good thermal stability, better accuracy and a faster procedure. Chromel-constantan thermocouples were utilized for measuring probes because of small and simple temperature dependence of magnetic field effect. Finding an empirical formula for all the calibration curves of TP of Chromel enable us to measure TP at any field and at any temperature. Finally, the experimental results on ErCo2 and LaRu2 are presented as test examples to demonstrate the possibilities and accuracy of our setup. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.