Generation and detection of spin currents:

Spin Pumping and Spin-Charge conversion

Prerna Kabtiyal

April 30, 2017

Abstract

Two major mechanisms for spintronic devices are the generationof spin currents and

the detection of spin. Spin Pumping provides an efficient route to pure spin current

generation in non-magnetic materials without the impedance mismatch problem. Due

to its ability to generate pure spin currents it is also widely employed for the study

of spin to charge conversion mechanisms such as Inverse Spin Hall Effect(ISHE) and

Inverse Rashba-Edelstein Effect(IREE). These phenomena allow the detection of spins

in 3D and 2D systems respectively where the spin-orbit coupling induces a charge

current due to spin current. Ever since its discovery in 2006, ISHE has been researched

and studied mostly in heavy metals. However, recent observations of IREE in Ag/Bi

and oxide interfaces have provided new directions for the development of spintronic

technology.

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 The development of future spintronics devices requires technology which intercon-

nects spin and charge. More specifically, we require a way to generate spin currents

in non-magnetic materials and to detect spin currents in these materials. This paper

focusses on the phenomena which facilitate these requirements. The first half of the pa-

per discusses ’Spin Pumping’, a technique that allows generation of pure spin currents.

The second half of the paper is targeted on the spin to charge conversion phenomena

which can be applied for spin detection. Two major spin to charge conversion phe-

nomena Inverse Spin Hall Effect (ISHE) and Inverse Rashba-Edelstein Effect (IREE)

are discussed here.

Spin Pumping
One of the main challenges for the development of spintronic devices is the transfer of

spin from a ferromagnet to a non-magnetic semiconductor. However the problem of

impedance mismatch destroys the spin polarization in the non-magnetic layer. Even

though there are ways to get around the conductance mismatch problem of spin in-

jection, such as introducing tunneling layers, spin pumping allows a much easier route

to achieve the same goal of obtaining spin polarization in the non-magnetic layer.

Spin pumping mechanism allows a flow of pure spin current, i.e.spin current without

the charge current into the NM. This mechanism only involves a transfer of angular

momentum from FM to NM without the transfer of charge, thereby avoiding the con-

ductance mismatch problem.

The dynamics of the magnetization in a ferromagnet can be described by the Landau-

Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation.

d→
−m d→
−m
= −γ →
−
m × Hef f + α→
−
m× (1)
dt dt

where, →
−
m is the magnetization vector, γ is the gyromagnetic ratio, Hef f is the effective

magnetic field, and α is the Gilbert damping constant. According to the LLG equa-

2
Figure 1: Schematic showing the spin injection phenomenon versus spin pumping phe-
nomenon

tion, in the presence of an effective magnetic field (resultant of applied, anisotropy and

demagnetization fields), the magnetization precesses around the effective field with

a frequency known as the Larmour frequency (ωL ), while also being subjected to a

constant damping, given by the second term in equation 1. This second term was

introduced by Gilbert and is known as Gilbert damping and is defined by α. The

damping causes the magnetization precession to spiral down to a time-independent

orientation along the effective field.

Recent research on spin-current induced magnetization switching motivated interest in

understanding the magnetization dynamics in thin ferromagnetic layers. Experimen-

tal studies showed that the Gilbert damping constant α was considerably enhanced

in normal-metal-ferromagnet hybrids compared to only ferromagnetic thin films. For

example, it was observed to be 0.04 < α < 0.22 for Cu-Co and Pt-Co versus only

α = 0.005 for bulk Co. A detailed theoretical explanation of this damping enhance-

ment was given by Tserkovnyak, Brataas and Bauer [?]. They consider the magne-

tization precession in the ferromagnet to act like a spin pump that transfers angular

momentum to the normal metal. This can be seen as the inverse of the spin current

induced switching. Spin current can apply a torque on magnetization and inversely

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a magnetization vector loses torque by emitting a spin current. Mathematically this

can be understood as a consequence of the dependence of the scattering matrix of the

FM-NM interface on the magnetization precession, which is analogous to the para-

metric charge pumping.[?]. This process is a push-pull process that happens due to

the time-dependent changes in two parameters of a system with some relative phase

between them. In the case of charge pumping these two parameters can be two gate

voltages applied to the device, but in the case of spin pumping there is only a single

parameter the magnetization vector →

−
m causing the pumping due to time-dependent

precession. However, as the magnetization precesses, the projection of →

−
m on the lane

perpendicular to the precession axis can be seen as made up of two components with
π
a relative phase of 2 between them. These two components behave as the two time

dependent parameters for the case of spin pumping. As the spin current pumps into the

NM layer, the magnetization feels a torque. By conservation of angular momentum,

this torque results in an enhancement of damping and therefore, an additional term

needs to be added to the LLG equation. This manifests as a renormalization of the α

and γ term as in equations below.

1 1
= {1 + gL Ai /4πM } (2)
γ γ0

γ
α= {α0 + gL Ar /4πM } (3)
γ0

where Ai and Ar are the interface transmission and reflection coefficients respectively.

Experimental studies were carried on different FM/NM multilayers to study the de-

pendence of Gilbert damping constant on the thickness of the Permalloy and on the

normal metal [?]. The studies were conducted on Permalloy layers sandwiched between

two NM layers. As shown in figure2, it was observed that the Gilbert damping constant

(α) shows a 1/d dependence, ’d’ being the thickness of the Py layer. With decreasing

thickness the interface becomes a larger ratio of the total volume and hence more con-

siderable. Therefore, the 1/d dependence indicates that the damping enhancement is

an interfacial effect. Experiments also showed that change in α depends on the NM

4
Figure 2: Py thickness dependence of Gilbert damping constant for NM/Py/NM layers with
different NM, thickness of NM layers is constant at 50Ao

layer. It was observed α increased almost upto two orders for heavy metals such as Pt

and Pd whereas there was a very slight increase for lighter metals such as Cu and Ta

(damping constant comparable to bulk values). The multilayer structures with NM=

Cu and Ta also showed no thickness dependence.

The enhanced damping is due to the torque on the magnetization from the transfer

of momentum to NM layer. Therefore, the spin-orbit coupling at the interface plays

a role in this phenomenon. As the spin-orbit coupling scales with atomic number as

Z 4 , which means heavier elements such as Pt and Pd have higher spin -orbit coupling.

Higher spin-orbit coupling means a faster spin flip relaxation. This means that the

spin current injected into the NM layer can get absorbed faster and result in a higher

torque. As the heavier metals such as Pt and Pd have faster spin flip relaxation times

the spin-current transfers a considerable torque causing enhanced damping. Such met-

als are called good spin sinks. However lighter metals such as Cu and Ta have slow

spin relaxation times, the spins don’t dissipate quickly and accumulate at the interface.

This blocks further flow of spin current into the NM layer and therefore considerable

5
Figure 3: a) Field dependence of the FMR absorbtion for Py/GaAs film when the external
magnetic field is applied along the film plane. b)field dependence of voltage measured across
the Py/GaAs films.

enhance damping is not seen. Such metals are called bad spin sinks.

Ever since the discovery of spin pumping phenomenon it has been widely used to gen-

erate pure spin currents for the measurements of phenomenon like Inverse Spin Hall

Effect(ISHE) and Inverse Edelstein Effect (IEE), as well as for the study of spin-orbit

coupling in diverse materials. These applications of spin pumping will be discussed

in the rest of this paper in connection to ISHE and IEE. However first we discuss

an experimental evidence of the spin pumping effect in semiconductors without the

impedance mismatch problem.

Electrically tunable spin injector

An important application of spin pumping is the injection of pure spin current into

semiconductors free from the impedance mismatch problem. This property was uti-

6
lized by K.Ando et al to develop a electrically tunable spin injector [?]. They used

microwave excitation of a Permalloy layer to inject pure spin currents in a GaAs layer

in a NiFe/GaAs heterostructure. The spin current injected into the GaAs layer is de-

tected using ISHE. ISHE refers to the phenomenon of generation of a charge current

transverse to a spin current. More details on ISHE are discussed later in this paper.

It was observed that the spin current injected into the semiconductor layer was of the

order of 106 Am−2 which is comparable to electrical spin injection in Pt. They also

observed the dependence of spin current on an applied voltage bias. The semiconduc-

tor/ferromagnet interface creates a schottky junction. Application of a voltage bias can

tune the schottky barrier and thus increase or decrease the spin-exchange at the inter-

face. Therefore, K.Ando et al demonstrated the implementation of Spin Pumping for

the realization of a room-temperature electrically controlled spin injector, with high in-

jection efficiency. Spin pumping provides an easy alternative to electrical spin injection

(free from conductance mismatch) to achieve spin polarization in non-magnetic metals.

The next step towards developing spintronic devices is to find a detection mechanism

to detect spins. There are two ways to do this: Inverse spin hall effect (ISHE) and

Inverse Rashba-Edelstein effect (IREE). FMR driven spin pumping provides an easy

way to create spin polarization for experimental study of spin detection. This paper

is going to discuss the experimental studies of ISHE and IREE with some theoretical

background on the physics behind the mechanisms.

Inverse Spin Hall Effect

The interconversion between spin and charge is essential for the development of spin-

tronic technology. Spin Hall Effect (SHE) refers to a phenomenon where an applied

charge current causes a transverse spin current. This can be due to spin-orbit inter-

action or relativistic effect of electron motion. The mechanism behind SHE can also

give rise to the inverse effect which is the generation of a charge current due to a spin

current. This phenomenon is known as the Inverse Spin Hall Effect(ISHE).

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Figure 4: a) Schematic of the experimental set-up for the Py/Pt film, b) schematic illustra-
tion of the spin pumping and ISHE effect.

Let there be a spin current Js flowing in the z-direction with spin polarization vec-

tor σ pointing in the x-direction. The flow of a spin current means that there are

electrons with two opposite spin polarizations (parallel and anti-parallel to σ) moving

in two opposite directions along the z and -z axis. The spin-orbit interaction bends

electrons with both spin-orientations in the same direction. This gives rise to a charge

flow transverse to the spin current. The relation between the spin current and charge

current is given by equation 4.

Jc = DISHE Js (4)

where DISHE is the coefficient representing the ISHE efficiency of a material.

The first experimental observation of ISHE was made by Saitoh et al in 2006, where

they observed it in Pt at room temperature.[?] They deposited Pt on top of Py and

utilized FMR driven spin pumping to generate pure spin current Js in Pt. Due to ISHE

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Figure 5: a) Field dependence of the FMR signal for Py/Pt films and Py film, b) Field
dependence of dV/dH for Py/Pt films where V is the electric potential difference across the
Pt layer.

there will be a flow of charge current which will appear as a voltage difference across

the Pt layer in the direction transfer to spin current flow. They used lockin techniques

to measure the voltage to detect the ISHE signal.

ISHE phenomenon is widely applied for the detection of spin injection and for studying

the spin-orbit coupling in various systems.

Inverse Rashba-Edelstein Effect

To understand the Inverse Rashba-Edelstein Effect we need to understand the Rashba

spin-orbit coupling.

Rashba Spin-orbit coupling

An electron with momentum p in a magnetic field B experiences a lorentz force F =

qp × B/m and has a zeeman energy EZeeman = µB σ.B where µB is the Bohr magneton

and σ is the Pauli spin matrix vector. Analogously we can think of this electron when

moving in an Electric field. The electron ’sees’ a magnetic field Bef f ≈ E × p/mc2 in

its rest frame. Therefore, there exists a momentum dependent Zeeman energy term

9
Figure 6: Spin-texture at the fermi surface due to the Rashba spin-orbit coupling

which is known as spin-orbit coupling.

HSO = µB (E × p).σ/mc2 (5)

The electrons in a crystal see a electric field due to the gradient of the crystal potential.

In 2D systems with broken structural inversion symmetry, the interfacial electric field,
→
−
E = Eb z , causes Rashba Spin-orbit coupling given by,

z × p).σ
HR = (α/h̄)(b (6)

where α is called the Rashba parameter. Therefore, Rashba SO coupling locks spin

to the linear momentum of the electron and causes an energy split between the spin

sub-bands [?].This creates a spin texture at the fermi surface as shown in figure 6

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Edelstein Effect

Edelstein effect refers to a charge current producing an in-plane transverse spin polar-

ization. The physics behind the Edelstein effect and Inverse Edelstein effect (IEE) is

similar. Since this paper is targeted towards spin to charge conversion, the following

section explains the physics from the point of view of the IEE.

Inverse Rashba-Edelstein Effect

Inverse Edelstein Effect (IEE) is the Onsager reciprocal of the Edelstein effect, which

occurs as a result of spin-orbit coupling. If the spin-orbit coupling associated is the

Rashba type then it is known as the Inverse Rashba-Edelstein Effect(IREE). IREE can

be seen as a 2D counterpart of ISHE which is a 3D phenomenon. Similar to ISHE,

IREE provides an easy way to detect spin currents. Therefore, it is important to study

IREE to develop spintronic devices as well to develop a reliable detection technique

for the study of Rashba spin-orbit coupling in novel systems. IREE results in a charge

current in the 2DEG due to an induced non-zero spin density. Therefore, IREE is

driven by the non-equilibrium spin density achieved through spin injection or spin

pumping. Figure7 shows a physical description of IREE. In the presence of the Rashba

spin-orbit coupling, the Rashba field at the fermi- surface is given by the equation

z × p).σ and is shown in figure [?]. Consider the non-equilibrium spin

HR = (α/h̄)(b

density being created through spin-pumping creating a y-polarized spin current. As

the spins pumped into the 2DEG have all possible momenta, they see different Rashba

fields dependent on their momentum. Consider points (0, kF ) and (0, −kF ), where the

Rashba fields point in the +x and -x directions respectively. As spins enter into the

2DEG, they start precessing around the Rashba fields. Therefore spins with momentum

+py get a component in the +z direction, whereas spins with −py get a component in

the -z direction. Similarly spins all over the fermi-sphere get some component along

the z-direction. Therefore the momentum of the spins is related to the z-component of

the total spin density (Sz ), which gives rise to a spin current Jyz . From this point on

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Figure 7: Schematic depicting the IREE mechanism

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the ISHE takes hold and converts this spin density into a perpendicular charge density

Jx . Mathematically this relationship comes out to be

Jx = λIEE Jsy (7)

where Jx is the charge current, Jsy is the y-polarized spin current and λIEE connects

areal spin density to a volume charge density and hence has the units of length. λIEE

can be seen as parameter defining the efficiency of IEE in a material,i.e. it is a conver-

sion factor between the 3-d spin current and 2-d charge current. In the case of pure

Rashba model λIEE = αR τ where τ is the momentum relaxation time.

Experimental Observations of IREE

IREE was first observed by Rojas Sanchez et al, in 2013 [?]. They deposited Ag

and Bi layers on top of Py layers. They studied three different kinds of multilayers,

Py/Ag, Py/Bi and Py/Ag/Bi. They injected a spin current into the non-magnetic

layers through spin pumping from the Py layer. The Py layer was driven into reso-

nance using microwave excitation. The spin current enters the NM layer in the vertical

direction. Inside the NM layer the IREE is expected to induce a charge current perpen-

dicular to the spin current. Therefore, the IREE is detected by measuring the voltage

across the NM layer. Then the voltage is converted into charge current using

aV
Ic = (8)
Rs l

where a and l are the width and length of the sample and Rs is the sheet resistance.

An alloy of Ag and Bi has been shown to have a very large Rashba spin-orbit coupling,

which was the motivation behind using Ag/Bi interface to observe IREE. They observed

that the charge current was many orders higher at the Ag/Bi interface compared to

only the Bi layer without Ag whereas the Ag layer alone shows no charge current at all.

This means that the measured signal is not due to ISHE signal in Ag or Bi layer which

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Figure 8: a) Spin-split dispersion curves of a Rashba 2DEG for αR > 0, b) Fermi contours
for Rashba split bands, c) schematic of experimental set-up with the Py/Ag/Bi system at
resonance

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Figure 9: FMR signal and corresponding charge currents calculated from measured voltage
for a) Py/Ag b) Py/Bi c) Py/Ag/Bi.

means that it is due to the IREE at the Ag/Bi interface. This work motivated further

research to identify the occurence of IREE in other 2DEG systems. In 2016 Lesne et

al showed a gate tunable IREE ocurring at the interface between two perovskite oxides

LaAlO3 (LAO) and SrT iO3 (STO) [?]. They deposited LAO and STO on Permalloy

to get NiFe/LAO/STO samples where the spin current was injected into the perovskite

layers from Permalloy through spin pumping mechanism. Transport measurements are

used to conclude the occurence of a 2DEG in STO in NiFe/LAO/STO heterostructures.

Microwave measurements were done to obtain the enhanced Gilbert damping term that

confirmed spin pumping into the 2DEG. The voltage across the LAO/STO interface is

measured to get the induced charge current. They obtained a ΛIREE = 6.4nm which

is one order higher than that obtained for Ag/Bi interface by Sanchez et al.

Since for spintronic devices ISHE and IREE essentially serve the same purpose, it is

useful to compare the two. However with ISHE being a 3d effect and IREE 2d, the

spin hall angle can be converted to λIREE through the equation λIREE = θSHE lsf ,

where lsf is the spin diffusion length. After this conversion, the λIREE is found to

be 0.2 nm for Pt, 0.3 nm for Ta and ).43 nm for W, all of which are efficient ISHE

materials. Because of the large dielectric constant of STO and small charge carrier

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Figure 10: Spin to charge conversion through IREE in LAO/STO 2DEG a)schematic of
experimental strategy, b)FMR signal in the Py layer as a function of field at gate voltage
Vg = +125V , c)detected voltage normalized to the square of the amplitude of rf field
for negative and positive fields for Vg = 125V , d)typical Rashba dispersion curves, e)principle
of IREE, the injected spin current with +y-polarized spins from the ferromagnet creates a
spin accumulation of spin-up electrons and a depletion of spin-down electrons which causes
a shift in the two inequivalent spin contours which induces a transverse charge current.

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density in LAO/STO 2DEG, it is possible to apply a gate voltage to manipulate the

electronic properties of the LAO/STO 2DEG. It was observed that the spin-charge

conversion showed considerable dependence on the gate voltage which might be due

to the multiband nature of the 2DEG electronic structure. This work shows that the

perovskite oxide interfaces have great potential for spintronic devices encompassing

both generation and detection of spin currents.

Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper discussed two important aspects of spintronic devices: spin

current generation through spin pumping and spin current detection through Inverse

Spin Hall Effect and Inverse Rashba-Edelstein Effect. The physical phenomenon behind

these effects are discussed followed by discussion of their experimental observations.

Spin Pumping is described to be due to additional torque from the precessing magne-

tization (inverse of the spin torque on magnetization vector). The physics of ISHE and

IREE is described as a consequence of spin-orbit coupling in heavy metals and 2DEGs

respectively. A deep understanding of these phenomenon is crucial and promising for

the development of spintronic technologies.

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