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Giant spin Hall effect in perpendicularly spin-polarized FePt/Au devices

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 125–129 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Conversion of charge current into pure spin current and vice versa in non-magnetic semiconductors1,2,3,4,5 or metals6,7,8, which are called the direct and inverse spin Hall effects9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 (SHEs), provide a new functionality of materials for future spin-electronic architectures17. Thus, the realization of a large SHE in a device with a simple and practical geometry is a crucial issue for its applications. Here, we present a multi-terminal device with a Au Hall cross and an FePt perpendicular spin injector to detect giant direct and inverse SHEs at room temperature. Perpendicularly magnetized FePt injects or detects perpendicularly polarized spin current without magnetic field, enabling the unambiguous identification of SHEs. The unprecedentedly large spin Hall resistance of up to 2.9 mΩ is attributed to the large spin Hall angle in Au through the skew scattering mechanism and the highly efficient spin injection due to the well-matched spin resistances of the chosen materials.

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Figure 1: ISHE.
Figure 2: Temperature and distance dependence of ISHE.
Figure 3: DSHE.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Industrial Technology Research Grant Program in 2005 from NEDO. The device fabrication was partly carried out at the Advanced Research Center of Metallic Glasses, IMR, Tohoku University. The authors thank G. E. W. Bauer, E. Saitoh and M. Mizuguchi for their helpful comments and critical reading of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan

    Takeshi Seki, Yu Hasegawa, Seiji Mitani, Saburo Takahashi, Sadamichi Maekawa & Koki Takanashi

  2. CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Tokyo 102-0075, Japan

    Saburo Takahashi, Hiroshi Imamura & Sadamichi Maekawa

  3. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba 305-8568, Japan

    Hiroshi Imamura

  4. Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan

    Junsaku Nitta

Authors
  1. Takeshi Seki
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  2. Yu Hasegawa
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  3. Seiji Mitani
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  7. Junsaku Nitta
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  8. Koki Takanashi
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Contributions

T.S. played the primary role in carrying out the sample preparation and the measurement. Y.H. assisted in the sample preparation and the measurement. The third author, S.T. and H.I. contributed to the theoretical modelling for the interpretation and the data analyses. All of the authors contributed to the physical understanding, the data analysis and the preparation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Takeshi Seki.

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Supplementary information and figures S1-S2 (PDF 475 kb)

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Seki, T., Hasegawa, Y., Mitani, S. et al. Giant spin Hall effect in perpendicularly spin-polarized FePt/Au devices. Nature Mater 7, 125–129 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2098

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