Improvement of the Effective Spin Hall Angle by Inserting an Interfacial Layer in Sputtered BiSb Topological Insulator (Bottom)/Ferromagnet With In-Plane Magnetization

Abstract

The topological insulator BiSb is promising for spin-orbit torque applications thanks to its high electrical conductivity and giant spin Hall effect. Previous works have reported a large spin Hall angle for BiSb deposited on top of a ferromagnetic layer with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. However, since BiSb has large surface roughness, obtaining a large spin Hall angle in BiSb (bottom)/ferromagnet (FM) is more challenging than in FM/BiSb (top) structures, especially when the FM layer is very thin. Here, we investigate the role of an interfacial layer on the effective spin Hall angle in BiSb (bottom)/FM with in-plane magnetization deposited by magnetron sputtering on sapphire substrates. We showed that inserting an interfacial layer with optimized thickness helps improve the effective spin Hall angle. We achieved a relatively high effective spin Hall angle of 1.7 in BiSb (bottom)/Ru 1 nm/Co 1 nm/Pt 1 nm structure.