No Arabic abstract
Recent experiments show that spin thermoelectrics is a promising approach to generate spin voltages. While spin chemical potentials are often limited to a surface layer of the order of the spin diffusion length, we show that thermoelectrically induced spin chemical potentials can extend much further in itinerant ferromagnets with paramagnetic impurities. In some cases, conservation laws, e.g., for a combination of spin and heat currents, give rise to a linear spin voltage profile. More generally, we find quasilinear profiles involving a spin thermoelectric length scale which far exceeds the spin diffusion length.
In recent years, new spin-dependent thermal effects have been discovered in ferromagnets, stimulating a growing interest in spin caloritronics, a field that exploits the interaction between spin and heat currents. Amongst the most intriguing phenomena is the spin Seebeck effect, in which a thermal gradient gives rise to spin currents that are detected through the inverse spin Hall effect. Non-magnetic materials such as graphene are also relevant for spin caloritronics, thanks to efficient spin transport, energy-dependent carrier mobility and unique density of states. Here, we propose and demonstrate that a carrier thermal gradient in a graphene lateral spin valve can lead to a large increase of the spin voltage near to the graphene charge neutrality point. Such an increase results from a thermoelectric spin voltage, which is analogous to the voltage in a thermocouple and that can be enhanced by the presence of hot carriers generated by an applied current. These results could prove crucial to drive graphene spintronic devices and, in particular, to sustain pure spin signals with thermal gradients and to tune the remote spin accumulation by varying the spin-injection bias.
A mesoscopic spin valve is used to determine the effective spin polarization of electrons tunneling from and into ferromagnetic transition metals at finite voltages. The tunneling spin polarization from the ferromagnet (FM) slowly decreases with bias, but drops faster and even inverts with voltage when electrons tunnel into it. A bias-dependent free electron model shows that in the former case electrons originate near the Fermi level of the FM with large polarization whereas in the latter, electrons tunnel into hot electron states for which the polarization is significantly reduced. The change in sign is ascribed to the detailed matching of the electron wave function through the tunnel barrier.
The polarization of the spin current pumped by a precessing ferromagnet into an adjacent normal metal has a constant component parallel to the precession axis and a rotating one normal to the magnetization. The former component is now routinely detected in the form of a DC voltage induced by the inverse spin Hall effect (ISHE). Here we compute AC-ISHE voltages much larger than the DC signals for various material combinations and discuss optimal conditions to observe the effect. Including the backflow of spins is essential for distilling parameters such as the spin Hall angle from ISHE-detected spin pumping experiments.
We propose an electrically driven spin injector into normal metals and semiconductors, which is based on a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) subjected to a microwave voltage. Efficient functioning of such an injector is provided by electrically induced magnetization precession in the free layer of MTJ, which generates the spin pumping into a metallic or semiconducting overlayer. We theoretically describe the spin and charge dynamics in the CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB/Au(GaAs) heterostructures. First, the magnedynamics in the free CoFeB layer is quantified with the account of a spin-transfer torque and a voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy. By numerically solving the magnetodynamics equation, we determine dependences of the precession amplitude on the frequency $f$ and magnitude $V_mathrm{max}$ of the ac voltage applied to the MTJ. It is found that the frequency dependence changes drastically above the threshold amplitude $V_mathrm{max} approx 200$mV, exhibiting a break at the resonance frequency $f_mathrm{res}$ due to nonlinear effects. The results obtained for the magnetization dynamics are used to describe the spin injection and pumping into the Au and GaAs overlayers. Since the generated spin current creates additional charge current owing to the inverse spin Hall effect, we also calculate distribution of the electric potential in the thick Au overlayer. The calculations show that the arising transverse voltage becomes experimentally measurable at $f = f_mathrm{res}$. Finally, we evaluate the spin accumulation in a long n$^+$-GaAs bar coupled to the MTJ and determine its temporal variation and spatial distribution along the bar. It is found that the spin accumulation under resonant excitation is large enough for experimental detection even at micrometer distances from the MTJ. This result demonstrates high efficiency of the described nanoscale spin injector.
We investigated the spin-dependent transport properties of a lateral spin-valve device with a 600 nm-long GaAs channel and ferromagnetic MnGa electrodes with perpendicular magnetization. Its current-voltage characteristics show nonlinear behavior below 50 K, indicating that tunnel transport through the MnGa/GaAs Schottky barrier is dominant at low temperatures. We observed clear magnetoresistance (MR) ratio up to 12% at 4 K when applying a magnetic field perpendicular to the film plane. Furthermore, a large spin-dependent output voltage of 33 mV is obtained. These values are the highest in lateral ferromagnetic metal / semiconductor / ferromagnetic metal spin-valve devices reported so far.