No Arabic abstract
As devices are reduced in size, interfaces start to dominate electrical transport making it essential to be able to describe reliably how they transmit and reflect electrons. For a number of nearly perfectly lattice-matched materials, we calculate from first-principles the dependence of the interface transparency on the crystal orientation. Quite remarkably, the largest anisotropy is predicted for interfaces between the prototype free-electron materials silver and aluminium for which a massive factor of two difference between (111) and (001) interfaces is found.
Spin currents can modify the magnetic state of ferromagnetic ultrathin films through spin-orbit torque. They may be generated by means of spin-orbit interaction by either bulk or interfacial phenomena. Electrical transport measurements reveal a six-fold increase of the spin-orbit torque accompanied by a drastic reduction of the spin Hall magnetoresistance upon the introduction of a Cu interlayer in a Pt/Cu/Co/Pt structure with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. We analyze the dependence of the spin Hall magnetoresistance with the thickness of the interlayer in the frame of a drift diffusion model that provides information on the expected spin currents and spin accumulations in the system. The results demonstrate that the major responsible of both effects is spin memory loss at the interface. The enhancement of the spin-orbit torque when introducing an interlayer opens the possibility to design more effient spintronic devices based on materials that are cheap and abundant such as copper.
The idea to utilize not only the charge but also the spin of electrons in the operation of electronic devices has led to the development of spintronics, causing a revolution in how information is stored and processed. A novel advancement would be to develop ultrafast spintronics using femtosecond laser pulses. Employing terahertz (10$^{12}$ Hz) emission spectroscopy, we demonstrate optical generation of spin-polarized electric currents at the interfaces of metallic ferromagnetic heterostructures at the femtosecond timescale. The direction of the photocurrent is controlled by the helicity of the circularly polarized light. These results open up new opportunities for realizing spintronics in the unprecedented terahertz regime and provide new insights in all-optical control of magnetism.
Terahertz (THz) spin-to-charge conversion has become an increasingly important process for THz pulse generation and as a tool to probe ultrafast spin interactions at magnetic interfaces. However, its relation to traditional, steady state, ferromagnetic resonance techniques is poorly understood. Here we investigate nanometric trilayers of Co/X/Pt (X=Ti, Au or Au0:85W0:15) as a function of the X layer thickness, where THz emission generated by the inverse spin Hall effect is compared to the Gilbert damping of the ferromagnetic resonance. Through the insertion of the X layer we show that the ultrafast spin current injected in the non-magnetic layer defines a direct spin conductance, whereas the Gilbert damping leads to an effective spin mixing-conductance of the trilayer. Importantly, we show that these two parameters are connected to each other and that spin-memory losses can be modeled via an effective Hamiltonian with Rashba fields. This work highlights that magneto-circuits concepts can be successfully extended to ultrafast spintronic devices, as well as enhancing the understanding of spin-to-charge conversion processes through the complementarity between ultrafast THz spectroscopy and steady state techniques.
A phonon frequency shift of the radial breathing mode for metallic single wall carbon nanotubes is predicted as a function of Fermi energy. Armchair nanotubes do not show any frequency shift while zigzag nanotubes exhibit phonon softening, but this softening is not associated with the broadening. This chirality dependence originates from a curvature-induced energy gap and a special electron-phonon coupling mechanism for radial breathing modes. Because of the particle-hole symmetry, only the off-site deformation potential contributes to the frequency shift. On the other hand, the on-site potential contributes to the Raman intensity, and the radial breathing mode intensity is stronger than that of the $G$ band. The relationship between the chirality dependence of the frequency shift of the radial breathing mode and the $Gamma$ point optical phonon frequency shift is discussed.
Recent experiments (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 50, 2085 (2011)) have demonstrated that the optical transmission through an array of subwavelength holes in a metal film can be enhanced by the intentional presence of dyes in the system. As the transmission maxima occurs spectrally close to the absorption resonances of the dyes, this phenomenon was christened Absorption Induced Transparency. Here, a theoretical study on Absorption Induced Transparency is presented. The results show that the appearance of transmission maxima requires that the absorbent fills the holes and that it occurs also for single holes. Furthermore, it is shown that the transmission process is non-resonant, being composed by a sequential passage of the EM field through the hole. Finally, the physical origin of the phenomenon is demonstrated to be non-plasmonic, which implies that Absorption Induced Transparency should also occur at the infrared or Terahertz frequency regimes.