Spin transport parameters in metallic multilayers determined by ferromagnetic resonance measurements of spin pumping

TL;DR

This study uses ferromagnetic resonance measurements of spin pumping to determine spin transport parameters in metallic multilayers, revealing the differing spin conduction abilities of Ta and Pt and implications for spin Hall effect measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract spin transport properties of multilayer metals from damping measurements, highlighting the impact of material resistivity and diffusion length.

Findings

Amorphous Ta is a poor spin conductor despite a short spin-diffusion length.

Pt is an excellent spin conductor with a very short spin diffusion length.

Spin Hall angle estimates in Pt may be underestimated due to assumptions about spin diffusion length.

Abstract

We measured spin transport in nonferromagnetic (NM) metallic multilayers from the contribution to damping due to spin pumping from a ferromagnetic Co90Fe10 thin film. The multilayer stack consisted of NM1/NM2/Co90Fe10(2 nm)/NM2/NM3 with varying NM materials and thicknesses. Using conventional theory for one dimensional diffusive spin transport in metals, we show that the effective damping due to spin pumping can be strongly affected by the spin transport properties of each NM in the multilayer, which permits the use of damping measurements to accurately determine the spin transport properties of the various NM layers in the full five-layer stack. We find that due to its high electrical resistivity, amorphous Ta is a poor spin conductor, in spite of a short spin-diffusion length of 1.0 nm, and that Pt is an excellent spin conductor by virtue of its low electrical resistivity and a spin diffusion length of only 0.5 nm. Spin Hall effect measurements may have underestimated the spin Hall angle in Pt by assuming a much longer spin diffusion length.