Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 32: Focus Session: Spin Current Devices

MA 32.1: Topical Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2013, 09:30–10:00, H10

Spin Hall and spin Nernst effect from first principles — •Ingrid Mertig — Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 06099 Halle, Germany

Spintronics without magnetic materials is an interesting alternative to the existing spintronics applications. The spin Hall effect creates spin currents in nonmagnetic materials and avoids the problem of spin injection. Future applications of the spin Hall effect require two properties of the materials, a large spin Hall angle and a long spin diffusion length. Ab intio calculations based on density functional theory are a powerful tool to design the desired materials and to get insight into the underlying microscopic processes. We investigated the spin Hall effect in dilute alloys, in particular the intrinsic effect based on the Berry curvature as well as the side-jump and skew-scattering contributions. The results demonstrate that a large extrinsic spin Hall effect is determined by the differences between host and impurity concerning the spin-orbit interaction. An alternative way is to deposit impurities in the adatom position of thin films. Furthermore, we predict a spin current perpendicular to a temperature gradient. The phenomenon is called spin Nernst effect.