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Observation of the antiferromagnetic spin Hall effect

Nature Materials volume 20, pages 800–804 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The discovery of the spin Hall effect1 enabled the efficient generation and manipulation of the spin current. More recently, the magnetic spin Hall effect2,3 was observed in non-collinear antiferromagnets, where the spin conservation is broken due to the non-collinear spin configuration. This provides a unique opportunity to control the spin current and relevant device performance with controllable magnetization. Here, we report a magnetic spin Hall effect in a collinear antiferromagnet, Mn2Au. The spin currents are generated at two spin sublattices with broken spatial symmetry, and the antiparallel antiferromagnetic moments play an important role. Therefore, we term this effect the ‘antiferromagnetic spin Hall effect’. The out-of-plane spins from the antiferromagnetic spin Hall effect are favourable for the efficient switching of perpendicular magnetized devices, which is required for high-density applications. The antiferromagnetic spin Hall effect adds another twist to the atomic-level control of spin currents via the antiferromagnetic spin structure.

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Fig. 1: Generation of σz via the AFM-SHE.
Fig. 2: Characterization of σz and its electrical control by ST-FMR signals.
Fig. 3: Deterministic field-free switching in Mn2Au/ferromagnet stacks.

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Source data are provided with this paper. Any other data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for fruitful discussions with J. Yin, D. Weiss, J. Han, K. Cai, P. He, S. D. Pollard and R. Mishra. This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2017YFB0405704), National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 51871130), Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality (grant no. JQ20010) and National Key R&D Program of China (grants no. 2016YFA0203800 and 2017YFB0405604). X.R.W. is supported by Hong Kong RGC (grants no. 16301518 and 16301619).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Xianzhe Chen, Shuyuan Shi, Guoyi Shi.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. MOE Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing Innovation Center for Future Chips, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Xianzhe Chen, Cheng Song, Xiaofeng Zhou, Hua Bai, Liyang Liao, Yongjian Zhou & Feng Pan

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuyuan Shi, Guoyi Shi & Hyunsoo Yang

  3. NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Guoyi Shi & Hyunsoo Yang

  4. The Key Lab for Magnetism and Magnetic Materials of Ministry of Education, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Xiaolong Fan, Hanwen Zhang & Desheng Xue

  5. Beijing Key Lab of Microstructure and Property of Solids, Institute of Microstructure and Properties of Advanced Materials, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China

    Ang Li, Yanhui Chen & Xiaodong Han

  6. Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Shan Jiang & Zengwei Zhu

  7. Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Huaqiang Wu

  8. Physics Department, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

    Xiangrong Wang

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Contributions

C.S. and X.C. designed the experiment. X.C., X.Z. and H.B. grew the thin films. X.C. and G.S. fabricated the devices. X.C., S.S., G.S., H.B. and H.Z. carried out the ST-FMR and MOKE measurements. X.C., X.Z. S.J., Y.Z. and Z.Z. performed the high magnetic field measurements. A.L., Y.C. and X.H. performed the structural characterizations. X.C., L.L., C.S., X.W., X.F. and D.X. proposed the theoretical model. H.W., H.Y. and F.P. gave suggestions on the experiments. C.S., H.Y. and F.P. supervised this study. All authors discussed the results and prepared the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Cheng Song, Hyunsoo Yang or Feng Pan.

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Peer review information Nature Materials thanks Byong-Guk Park and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–12, Table 1, Notes 1–13 and references.

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Chen, X., Shi, S., Shi, G. et al. Observation of the antiferromagnetic spin Hall effect. Nat. Mater. 20, 800–804 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-00946-z

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