Surface-assisted Spin Hall Effect in Au Films with Pt Impurities

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a surface-assisted mechanism for giant room-temperature spin Hall effect in Pt-doped Au films, combining experimental measurements with theoretical calculations to reveal enhanced surface spin-orbit interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel surface-assisted skew scattering route to achieve large spin Hall effects, supported by experimental data and ab initio plus quantum Monte Carlo calculations.

Findings

Giant spin Hall angle of 0.12 in 10 nm Au films at room temperature.

Surface Pt impurities induce significant spin-orbit interactions, unlike in bulk Au.

Enhanced spin-orbit coupling due to valence fluctuation of Pt on Au surface.

Abstract

We show, both experimentally and theoretically, a novel route to obtain giant room temperature spin Hall effect due to surface-assisted skew scattering. In the experiment, we report the spin Hall effect in Pt-doped Au films with different thicknesses $t_N$. The giant spin Hall angle $\gamma_S$ = $0.12 \pm 0.04$ is obtained for $t_N$ = 10 nm at room temperature, while it is much smaller for $t_N$ = 20 nm sample. Combined ab initio and quantum Monte Carlo calculations for the skew scattering due to a Pt impurity show $\gamma_S$ $\cong$ 0.1 on the Au (111) surface, while it is small in bulk Au. The quantum Monte Carlo results show that the spin-orbit interaction of the Pt impurity on the Au (111) surface is enhanced, because the Pt 5d levels are lifted to the Fermi level due to the valence fluctuation. In addition, there are two spin-orbit interaction channels on the Au (111) surface, while only one in bulk Au.