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Photo-spin-voltaic effect

Nature Physics volume 12, pages 861–866 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

The photo-voltaic effect typically occurs in semiconductors and involves photon-driven excitation of electrons from a valence band to a conduction band. In a region such as a p–n junction that has a built-in electric field, the excited electrons and holes diffuse in opposite directions, resulting in an electric voltage. This letter reports that a spin voltage can be created by photons in a non-magnetic metal that is in close proximity to a magnetic insulator: a photo-spin-voltaic effect. The experiments use platinum/magnetic insulator bilayer structures. On exposure to light, there occurs photon-driven, spin-dependent excitation of electrons in several platinum atomic layers near the platinum/magnetic insulator interface. The excited electrons and holes diffuse in different manners, and this gives rise to an effective spin voltage at the interface and a corresponding pure spin current that flows across the platinum.

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Figure 1: Photo-spin-voltaic effect in a platinum (Pt)/magnetic insulator (MI) bi-layered structure.
Figure 2: Main features of the PSV effect.
Figure 3: Measurements for different illumination/magnetization configurations.
Figure 4: Measurements using different light sources and optical filters.
Figure 5: Theoretical interpretation.
Figure 6: Control measurements.

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Acknowledgements

This work was primarily supported by the US Army Research Office under Award W911NF-14-1-0501. In addition, the fabrication and structural characterization of YIG, YIG/Pt, YIG/Cu and GGG/Pt samples and the DFT calculations were supported by the SHINES, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under Award SC0012670; the fabrication and structural characterization of BaM, BaM/Pt and BaM/Cu samples was supported by the C-SPIN, one of the SRC STARnet Centers sponsored by MARCO and DARPA; and the ferromagnetic resonance and spin pumping measurements were supported by the US National Science Foundation under Award ECCS-1231598. The authors would like to thank J. Sites and J. Raguse of the CSU Photovoltaics Laboratory for helpful discussions regarding optical spectroscopy.

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Author notes

  1. David Ellsworth and Lei Lu: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA

    David Ellsworth, Lei Lu, Houchen Chang, Peng Li, Bryan Johnson, Yuqi Bian & Mingzhong Wu

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA

    Jin Lan, Jun Hu & Ruqian Wu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics and Key Laboratory for Computational Physical Sciences and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China

    Jin Lan, Zhe Wang, Jiang Xiao & Ruqian Wu

  4. Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China

    Jiang Xiao

Authors
  1. David Ellsworth
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Contributions

L.L., D.E. and M.W. conceived the idea and designed the experiments. L.L. established the experimental set-up. D.E. and L.L. performed the measurements and analysed the data. H.C. and P.L. fabricated and characterized the samples. B.J. contributed to the experimental set-up. Y.B. contributed to the measurements. J.L., J.X. and R.W. provided the theoretical model. J.L., Z.W. and J.H. performed the calculations. M.W. supervised the experimental study. R.W. supervised the theoretical study. D.E., J.L., R.W. and M.W. wrote the paper and the Supplementary Information with help from all the other co-authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ruqian Wu or Mingzhong Wu.

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Ellsworth, D., Lu, L., Lan, J. et al. Photo-spin-voltaic effect. Nature Phys 12, 861–866 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3738

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