Spin-circuit representation of spin pumping into topological insulators and determination of giant spin Hall angle and inverse spin Hall voltages

TL;DR

This paper develops a spin-circuit model for spin pumping into topological insulators, revealing high spin Hall angles and strategies to enhance inverse spin Hall voltages for spintronic device applications.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive spin-circuit representation considering both bulk and surface states, and demonstrates methods to optimize spin mixing conductance and voltages.

Findings

High effective spin mixing conductance explained by surface states

Determined near-maximum spin Hall angle of one from experiments

Using a spin-sink layer doubles the inverse spin Hall voltage

Abstract

Topological insulators and giant spin-orbit toque switching of nanomagnets are one of the frontier topics for the development of energy-efficient spintronic devices. Spin-circuit representations involving different materials and phenomena are quite well-established now for its prowess of interpreting experimental results and then designing complex and efficient functional devices. Here, we construct the spin-circuit representation of spin pumping into topological insulators considering both the bulk and surface states with parallel channels, which allows the interpretation of practical experimental results. We show that the high increase in effective spin mixing conductance and inverse spin Hall voltages cannot be explained by the low-conductive bulk states of topological insulators. We determine high spin Hall angle close to the maximum magnitude of one from experimental results and with an eye to design efficient spin devices, we further employ a spin-sink layer in the spin-circuit formalism to increase the effective spin mixing conductance at low thicknesses and double the inverse spin Hall voltage.