Highly efficient and tuneable spin-to-charge conversion through Rashba coupling at oxide interfaces
Abstract
The spin-orbit interaction couples the electrons' motion to their spin. Accordingly, passing a current in 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 spintronics 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 spintronics 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) LaAlO3/SrTiO3 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1609.06464,
title = {Highly efficient and tuneable spin-to-charge conversion through Rashba coupling at oxide interfaces},
author = {E. Lesne and Y. Fu and S. Oyarzun and J. C. Rojas-Sanchez and D. C. Vaz and H. Naganuma and G. Sicoli and J. -P. Attane and M. Jamet and E. Jacquet and J. -M. George and A. Barthelemy and H. Jaffres and A. Fert and M. Bibes and L. Vila},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.06464},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
Final version just published in Nature Materials. Contact author for a reprint