We demonstrate that a giant spin Hall effect (SHE) can be induced by introducing a small amount of Bi impurities in Cu. Our analysis based on a new 3-dimensional finite element treatment of spin transport shows that the sign of the SHE induced by the Bi impurities is negative and its spin Hall (SH) angle amounts to -0.24. Such a negative large SH angle in CuBi alloys can be explained by applying the resonant scattering model proposed by Fert and Levy [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 157208 (2011)] to 6p impurities.
@article{arxiv.1208.6208,
title = {Giant Spin Hall Effect Induced by Skew Scattering from Bismuth Impurities inside Thin Film CuBi Alloys},
author = {Y. Niimi and Y. Kawanishi and D. H. Wei and C. Deranlot and H. X. Yang and M. Chshiev and T. Valet and A. Fert and Y. Otani},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.6208},
year = {2015}
}