Abstract
Detection and manipulation of spin current lie in the core of spintronics. Here we report an active control of a net spin Hall angle, θSHE(net), in Pt at an interface with a ferroelectric material PZT (PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3), using its ferroelectric polarization. The spin Hall angle in the ultra-thin Pt layer is measured using the inverse spin Hall effect with a pulsed tunneling current from a ferromagnetic La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 electrode. The effect of the ferroelectric polarization on θSHE(net) is enhanced when the thickness of the Pt layer is reduced. When the Pt layer is thinner than 6 nm, switching the ferroelectric polarization even changes the sign of θSHE(net). This is attributed to the reversed polarity of the spin Hall angle in the 1st-layer Pt at the PZT/Pt interface when the ferroelectric polarization is inverted, as supported by the first-principles calculations. These findings suggest a route for designing future energy efficient spin-orbitronic devices using ferroelectric control.
Highlights
Detection and manipulation of spin current lie in the core of spintronics
Instead of utilizing the spin-polarized charge current found in typical spintronics devices, spin orbitronics manipulates the degree of charge-spin conversion by tuning the spin-orbit interaction[5,6]
La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 (LSMO) and Co films with distinct coercive fields are used as ferromagnetic electrodes; the tunneling barrier consists of a ferroelectric PZT layer epitaxially grown on LSMO22
Summary
Detection and manipulation of spin current lie in the core of spintronics. Here we report an active control of a net spin Hall angle, θSHE(net), in Pt at an interface with a ferroelectric material PZT (PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3), using its ferroelectric polarization. When the Pt layer is thinner than 6 nm, switching the ferroelectric polarization even changes the sign of θSHE(net) This is attributed to the reversed polarity of the spin Hall angle in the 1st-layer Pt at the PZT/Pt interface when the ferroelectric polarization is inverted, as supported by the firstprinciples calculations. These findings suggest a route for designing future energy efficient spin-orbitronic devices using ferroelectric control. Instead of utilizing the spin-polarized charge current found in typical spintronics devices, spin orbitronics manipulates the degree of charge-spin conversion (i.e., spin Hall effect, or inverse spin Hall effect) by tuning the spin-orbit interaction[5,6] The efficiency of this conversion is described by the spin Hall angle, θSHE. This new tunability can be understood as a result of energy-landscape modification of the interfacial Pt layer due to the large electric polarization of PZT (Fig. 1), which leads to either a shift of the density of states or emergence of the Rashbasplitting states, resulting in the change of polarity of the spincharge conversion in the Pt layer
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