Highly efficient and tunable spin-to-charge conversion through Rashba coupling at oxide interfaces

The spin-orbit interaction couples the electrons' motion to their spin. As a result, a charge current running through a material with strong spin-orbit coupling generates a transverse spin current (spin Hall effect, SHE) and vice versa (inverse spin Hall effect, ISHE). The emergence of SHE and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature materials 2016-12, Vol.15 (12), p.1261-1266
Main Authors: Lesne, E, Fu, Yu, Oyarzun, S, Rojas-Sánchez, J C, Vaz, D C, Naganuma, H, Sicoli, G, Attané, J-P, Jamet, M, Jacquet, E, George, J-M, Barthélémy, A, Jaffrès, H, Fert, A, Bibes, M, Vila, L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Condensed Matter
Efficiency
Electric current
Electron spin
Electrons
Gates
Hall effect
Materials Science
Metal oxides
Oxides
Physics
Spin-orbit interactions
Spintronics
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Summary:The spin-orbit interaction couples the electrons' motion to their spin. As a result, a charge current running through a material with strong spin-orbit coupling generates a transverse spin current (spin Hall effect, SHE) and vice versa (inverse spin Hall effect, ISHE). The emergence of SHE and ISHE as charge-to-spin interconversion mechanisms offers a variety of novel spintronic functionalities and devices, some of which do not require any ferromagnetic material. However, the interconversion efficiency of SHE and ISHE (spin Hall angle) is a bulk property that rarely exceeds ten percent, and does not take advantage of interfacial and low-dimensional effects otherwise ubiquitous in spintronic hetero- and mesostructures. Here, we make use of an interface-driven spin-orbit coupling mechanism-the Rashba effect-in the oxide two-dimensional electron system (2DES) LaAlO /SrTiO to achieve spin-to-charge conversion with unprecedented efficiency. Through spin pumping, we inject a spin current from a NiFe film into the oxide 2DES and detect the resulting charge current, which can be strongly modulated by a gate voltage. We discuss the amplitude of the effect and its gate dependence on the basis of the electronic structure of the 2DES and highlight the importance of a long scattering time to achieve efficient spin-to-charge interconversion.
ISSN:1476-1122
1476-4660
DOI:10.1038/nmat4726