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Research Highlight | Materials Science

Reduced spin Hall effects from magnetic proximity

We demonstrated that for Pt and Pd increased induced magnetic moments are correlated with strongly reduced spin-Hall conductivities. In particular we see that spin Hall conductivities are reduced at low temperatures, but only if the Pd and Pt is in direct contact with a ferromagnetic permalloy layer. This observation finds an intuitive explanation in the development of a spin splitting of the chemical potential and the energy dependence of the intrinsic spin-Hall effect determined by first-principles calculations. Since for both paramagnetic Pd and Pt the energy dependence of the spin Hall conductivity is close to a maximum at the Fermi level, any increased magnetic moment, which is akin to an increase and decrease of the chemical potential for the majority and minority electrons, respectively, results in a decreased spin Hall conductivity for both spin channels. This work provides simple guidance towards the optimization of spin current efficiencies for devices based on spin-orbit coupling phenomena.

Reduced spin-Hall effects from magnetic proximity,
Wei Zhang, Matthias B. Jungfleisch, Wanjun Jiang, Yaohua Liu, John E. Pearson, Suzanne G.E. te Velthuis, Axel Hoffmann, Frank Freimuth, and Yuriy Mokrousov,
Phys. Rev. B 91, 115316 (2015)

APS Journal