Unlocking hidden spins in centrosymmetric 1T transition metal dichalcogenides by vacancy-controlled spin-orbit scattering

Abstract

Spin current generation and manipulation remain the key challenge of spintronics, in which relativistic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) plays a ubiquitous role. In this paper, we demonstrate that hidden Rashba spins in the nonmagnetic, centrosymmetric lattice of multilayer ${\mathrm{SnSe}}_{2}$ can be efficiently activated by spin-orbit scattering introduced by Se vacancies. Via vacancy scattering, conduction electrons with hidden spin-momentum locked polarizations acquire out-of-plane magnetization components, which effectively break the chiral symmetry between the two Se sublattices of an ${\mathrm{SnSe}}_{2}$ monolayer when electron spins start precession in the strong built-in Rashba SOC field. The resulting spin separations are manifested in quantum transport as vacancy concentration- and temperature-dependent crossovers from weak antilocalization to weak localization, with the distinctive spin relaxation mechanism of the D'yakonov-Perel' type. In a nonlocal geometry, the generated spins exhibit a long diffusion length exceeding 5 $\textmu{}\mathrm{m}$, when fast momentum scattering protects the effective spin polarizations by driving the random-walk evolution of spin precessions subject to rapidly changing Rashba SOC field. Our study shows the great potential of two-dimensional systems with hidden-spin textures for spintronics.