Spin Hall effect

Abstract

Abstract This chapter discusses the spin Hall effect that occurs during spin injection from a ferromagnet to a nonmagnetic conductor in nanostructured devices. This provides a new opportunity for investigating AHE in nonmagnetic conductors. In ferromagnetic materials, the electrical current is carried by up-spin and downspin electrons, with the flow of up-spin electrons being slightly deflected in a transverse direction while that of down-spin electrons being deflected in the opposite direction; this results in an electron flow in the direction perpendicular to both the applied electric field and the magnetisation directions. Since up-spin and downspin electrons are strongly imbalanced in ferromagnets, both spin and charge currents are generated in the transverse direction by AHE, the latter of which are observed as the electrical Hall voltage.