Spin Injection and Inverse Edelstein Effect in the Surface States of Topological Kondo Insulator SmB6

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates spin injection and the inverse Edelstein effect in the surface states of the topological Kondo insulator SmB6, highlighting the potential for spintronic applications leveraging surface state properties.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental observation of spin injection and inverse Edelstein effect in SmB6's surface states, overcoming challenges posed by bulk conduction.

Findings

Clear spin signals observed at low temperatures

Spin-momentum locking confirmed through magnetic field dependence

Surface states dominate conduction at low temperatures

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in exploiting the spin degrees of freedom of electrons for potential information storage and computing technologies. Topological insulators (TI), a class of quantum materials, have special gapless edge/surface states, where the spin polarization of the Dirac fermions is locked to the momentum direction. This spin-momentum locking property gives rise to very interesting spin-dependent physical phenomena such as the Edelstein and inverse Edelstein effects. However, the spin injection in pure surface states of TI is very challenging because of the coexistence of the highly conducting bulk states. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the spin injection and observe the inverse Edelstein effect in the surface states of a topological Kondo insulator, SmB6. At low temperatures when only surface carriers are present, a clear spin signal is observed. Furthermore, the magnetic field angle dependence of the spin signal is consistent with spin-momentum locking property of surface states of SmB6.