Spin Hall effect induced by Bi impurities in Cu: Skew scattering and side-jump

Abstract

The spin Hall effect (SHE) has recently turned out to be an interesting tool for the conversion between charge and spin currents, the conversion factor being characterized by the spin Hall angle ${\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{H}$. Large spin Hall angles have been now measured in heavy metals like W (${\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{H}=\ensuremath{-}0.33$) and Cu doped with Bi impurities (${\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{H}=\ensuremath{-}0.24$). In this article we express the contributions to the SHE induced by skew scattering and scattering with side-jump from Bi impurities in Cu, and we use ab initio calculations of the electronic structure of CuBi alloys to estimate the values of these two contributions. The predominant effect comes from skew scattering; the spin Hall angle is negative in agreement with experiments, but the calculated amplitude is smaller.