A theory of a thermally induced single-electron "shuttling" instability in a
magnetic nanomechanical device subject to an external magnetic field is
presented in the Coulomb blockade regime of electron transport. The model
magnetic shuttle device considered comprises a movable metallic grain suspended
between two magnetic leads, which are kept at different temperatures and
assumed to be fully spin polarized with antiparallel magnetizations. For a
given temperature difference shuttling is found to occur for a region of
external magnetic fields between a lower and an upper critical field strength,
which separate the shuttling regime from normal small-amplitude "vibronic"
regimes. We find that (i) the upper critical magnetic field saturates to a
constant value in the high temperature limit and that the shuttle instability
domain expands with a decrease of the temperature, (ii) the lower critical
magnetic field depends not only on the temperature independent phenomenological
friction coefficient used in the model but also on intrinsic friction (which
vanishes in the high temperature limit) caused by magnetic exchange forces and
electron tunneling between the quantum dot and the leads. The feasibility of
using thermally driven magnetic shuttle systems to harvest thermal breakdown
phenomena is discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure
