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PUBLISHED ONLINE: 23 APRIL 2012|DOI: 10.1038/NMAT3279

Spin Hall effect devices

Tomas Jungwirth1,2*, Jrg Wunderlich1,3 and Kamil Olejnk1,3
The spin Hall effect is a relativistic spinorbit coupling phenomenon that can be used to electrically generate or detect spin currents in non-magnetic systems. Here we review the experimental results that, since the rst experimental observation of the spin Hall effect less than 10 years ago, have established the basic physical understanding of the phenomenon, and the role that several of the spin Hall devices have had in the demonstration of spintronic functionalities and physical phenomena. We have attempted to organize the experiments in a chronological order, while simultaneously dividing the Review into sections on semiconductor or metal spin Hall devices, and on optical or electrical spin Hall experiments. The spin Hall device studies are placed in a broader context of the eld of spin injection, manipulation, and detection in non-magnetic conductors.

he spin Hall effect (SHE) was predicted 40 years ago1,2. Theorists Dyakonov and Perel proposed that an unpolarized electrical current should lead to a transverse spin current in systems with the relativistic spinorbit coupling. In their picture, spinorbit coupling enters SHE via the Mott scattering of electrons on unpolarized impurities, which results in spatial separation of electrons with opposite spins. The effect has a Hall symmetry, because the polarization axis of the spins is perpendicular to the plane of the transverse spin current and the driving longitudinal electrical current. Concepts for the experimental detection of the phenomenon were introduced by Hirsch3 and Zhang 4 almost 30years after the original theoretical
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b
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Reectivity (a.u.) 2 3 4 5

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50 Position (m)

50

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150 40 20 0 20 40 40 20 0 20 40 Position (m) Position (m)

Figure 1 | Observation of SHE by the magneto-optical Kerr microscope. a,b, Two-dimensional images of spin polarization density ns (a) and reectivity (b), for the unstrained GaAs sample measured at temperature 30K and applied driving electric eld 10mVm1. Arbitrary units are used for ns as the measured Kerr rotation signal is not calibrated to the corrresponding spin density for this measurement. Figure reproduced with permission from ref.21, 2004 AAAS.

work. Hirsch proposed a device in which a spin current is generated by SHE in one part and injected into another part where it is detected by the inverse spin Hall effect (iSHE). In iSHE, the spin current generates a transverse current of charge and when accumulated at the edges of the sample the charge can be detected electrically 3. Relying on both SHE and iSHE simultaneously for observing the phenomenon turned out to be experimentally challenging, and the method was realized only recently 5. The proposal3 that SHE has an inverse counterpart has, nevertheless, played a key role in establishing the basic physics of the phenomenon and in utilizing the effect as a tool for both the electrical injection and electrical detection of spin currents in non-magnetic materials. Zhang 4 suggested that the edge spin accumulation produced by SHE could be detected electrically using an attached ferromagnetic probe6. The method is based on measuring the dependence of the electrochemical potential at the detection ferromagnetic electrode on the relative orientation of the magnetization of the electrode, and the accumulated spins in the non-magnetic system underneath it. It took several years to demonstrate the viability of this method7. Nevertheless, in a broader context, the idea of connecting SHE with the more mature field, which utilizes ferromagnets for injection and detection of spins in non-magnetic systems, has fuelled numerous important studies of spin Hall devices. The experimental discovery of SHE was prompted by theoretical work that approached the SHE physics from a different angle. Inspired by studies of the intrinsic nature of the closely related anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnets8,9, Murakami et al.10 and Sinovaetal.11 predicted that a spin-dependent transverse deflection of electrons in non-magnetic systems can originate directly from the relativistic band structure of the conductor without involving the Mott scattering. The intrinsic SHE proposal triggered an intense theoretical debate, which is summarized in several review articles1220. Unlike Hirsch3 and Zhang 4 who considered the extrinsic, scattering induced SHE1 and electrical detection schemes designed for metals, the intrinsic SHE proposals focused on semiconductors and suggested that the optical activity of these materials be utilized for detecting SHE. In particular, the circularly polarized electroluminescence was suggested in ref.10 and the magneto-optical Kerr effect in refs10,11. These methods were used in the first measurements of the SHE phenomenon. Kato et al.21 employed a magneto-optical Kerr microscope to scan the spin polarization across the channel (Fig.1), whereas Wunderlich etal.22 used coplanar pn diodes to detect circularly polarized electroluminescence at opposite edges of the spin Hall channel (Fig.2; ref.23). Remarkably, Wunderlichetal. ascribed the observed signal to the intrinsic SHE whereas Kato etal. to the extrinsic SHE.

Institute of Physics ASCR, v.v.i., Cukrovarnick 10, 162 53 Praha 6, Czech Republic, 2School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK, 3Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK. *e-mail: jungw@fzu.cz
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Following the discovery of SHE, experiments with optical spin detection have explored the basic phenomenologies of the extrinsic and intrinsic SHEs2130, as well as demonstrating the potential of SHE as a spin-current source25. A two-colour optical excitation technique with perpendicular linear polarizations of the incident laser beams was used to detect iSHE in a semiconductor 31. The spin-current source produced by laser excitation is transferred, owing to iSHE, into a transverse electrical current, resulting in a spatially dependent charge accumulation that was detected by the optical transmission signal of a probe laser beam. Very recently, these all-optical measurements in an intrinsic semiconductor were performed on timescales shorter than the scattering time, and have provided the most direct demonstration of the intrinsic spin Hall signal32. The seminal two-colour optical injection work31 was performed almost simultaneously with the first experiments on iSHE in metals utilizing spin injection from a ferromagnetic contact 33,34. The experiments demonstrated the potential of iSHE for optical and electrical spin detection. A distinct approach for observing iSHE generated by an optically injected spin current in a semiconductor is based on the absorption of circularly polarized light. The roots of this technique can be traced back to experiments in which a circularly polarized beam at the normal incidence to the surface of a bulk semiconductor was used to excite spin-polarized photo-electrons35,36. These electrons diffuse in the vertical direction from the surface and after aligning their spins along an axis parallel to the surface by an applied magnetic field (by Hanle precession), an electrical voltage was detected in the transverse in-plane direction35. (Alternatively, the vertically spinpolarized electrons can be accelerated in the in-plane direction by an applied electrical bias to also yield a transverse in-plane voltage36.) Because in these experiments the source of spin current is accompanied by a diffusive or drift charge current, and the Hall signal is measured across the optically excited spin-polarized region of the semiconductor, the geometry is halfway between the anomalous Hall effect in a ferromagnet and iSHE. Recently, the same type of a coplanar pn diode as used in ref.22, but now operated as a photo-cell, has allowed the optical spin generation and electrical spin detection regions of the semiconductor to be separated37. The inverse spin Hall
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effect induced by the pure spin-current was eventually observed in these devices by draining the pn junction electrical current before the Hall cross38. The work showed that iSHE can be combined with spin-precession phenomena in electrically controllable Rashba and Dresselhaus spinorbit fields. (This is the type of spin manipulation considered in the original DattaDas spin-transistor proposal39.) It led to the demonstration of a tunable electrical polarimeter and a spin-transistor logic device37,38. The pioneering works combining iSHE and SHE with the previously known spin injection and detection techniques utilizing ferromagnetic contacts were performed in metals, taking advantage of the compatibility of non-magnetic metal channels with conventional metal ferromagnets. In some cases7,34,4042, the electrical spins were injected from a ferromagnetic contact 6. In others, the ferromagnetic resonance spin-pumping method4345 was used33,4648. Metal spin Hall devices provided the first demonstration of the electrical measurement of SHE by an attached ferromagnetic contact 7, as proposed originally by Zhang 4, and showed that one non-magnetic metal electrode can generate SHE or iSHE, that is, can be used as an electrical spin injector or detector 7,34,4042. They also showed that extrinsic spin Hall angles can be large even at room temperature in metals with strong spinorbit coupling. Experiments based on the ferromagnetic spin-pumping effect suggested that iSHE and SHE can be used as an electrical detector and generator of spin dynamics in magnetic microstructures33,46,4951. The utility of a metal iSHE sensor led to the discovery of the spin Seebeck effect, opening a new experimental research area in the field of spin caloritronics5255. Recently, an experiment in a metalsemiconductor hybrid structure was reported, which demonstrated the conversion of circularly polarized light absorbed in a semiconductor to an electrical signal in an attached metal iSHE sensor 56. In the past two years, semiconductor spin Hall devices have entered the realm of metals by not requiring light for their operation. This development started with an experiment 5 that materialized the original idea of Hirsch3 for simultaneously employing SHE and iSHE to detect the phenomenon electrically. It is remarkable that not only was the experiment performed in a semiconductor but, also unlike
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Up Polarization (%) 2 1 0 1 2

n channel ILED

2DHG n p n

Ip

ILED

ILED

e
Polarization (%) 2 1 0 1 2 1.500 1.505 1.510 Energy (eV) 1.515 1.520

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Figure 2 | Observation of SHE by the circularly polarized electroluminescence of coplanar pn diodes. a, Schematic of the lateral pn junction with the channel current Ip and the diode current ILED for detecting spin accumulation. b, Light emission from the pn junction recorded by a charged-coupled device camera. The black dashed line shows the position of the pn junction. c, Electron microscope image of the microdevice with symmetrically placed pndiodes at both edges of the 2D hole gas channel. d,e, Emitted light polarization of recombined light in the pn junction for the channel and diode current ow indicated by arrows in (c). Figure reproduced with permission from ref.23, 2005 APS.
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the original proposal, the measured SHEiSHE microdevice worked in the ballistic transport regime of the intrinsic SHE. Compared with metals, semiconductor spin-transport devices with ferromagnetic metal electrodes can suffer from the problem of resistance mismatch between semiconductors and common metal ferromagnets, which hinders efficient spin transport across the interface57. The introduction of a highly resistive tunnel barrier between the ferromagnetic metal electrode and the semiconductor channel solves this problem58,59, and ferromagnetic tunnel contacts were successfully used to detect the SHE-induced spin accumulation in a semiconductor 60. Recently, a spin Hall device has been reported that utilizes electrical injection from a ferromagnet/semiconductor tunnel contact and demonstrates electrical spin detection by iSHE and by the ferromagnetic probe electrode61. Also, the device shows the possibility of modulating the detector spin signal by electrically controlled drift of the spins. The resistance mismatch problem can also be tackled without introducing a tunnel barrier between the ferromagnetic metal and the semiconductor, as demonstrated recently in ref.62, where a semiconductor iSHE device is reported that has an ohmic contact between the ferromagnetic electrode and the semiconductor, and where spin injection is realized by ferromagnetic resonance spin pumping. For imaging the SHE-induced edge spin accumulation by Kerr rotation microscopy, Kato etal.21 used unstrained n-GaAs and strained n-In0.07Ga0.93As three-dimensional (3D) epilayers, which were patterned into 30077m2 and 30033m2 channels, respectively. The wafers were doped to a low electron density of n=31016cm3 to achieve long spin lifetimes of s ~110ns. This corresponds to a spin diffusion length of Ls=(Ds)1/2~110m, where D is the diffusion constant. In his seminal theoretical work, Zhang 4 showed by solving the spin-dependent drift-diffusion equations for a finite width channel that Ls defines the length scale of the edge spin accumulation. The analysis based on the drift-diffusion equations, which assumes wellresolved spin-up and spin-down transport channels3,4, is applicable only in the weak spinorbit coupling limit, so/<<1. Estimates of
a

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the characteristic spinorbit coupling energy so and momentum scattering time in the 3D semiconductor samples studied in ref.21 yield so/ ~103, that is, confirm the weak spinorbit coupling regime of the samples. The required spatial resolution to observe SHE was therefore Ls~110m, which is achievable by using Kerr rotation microscopy. The out-of-plane spin-polarization density ns measured by Kato etal.21 is shown in Fig.1. Consistent with the SHE phenomenology, spin polarizations at opposite edges of the channel have opposite sign. Further consistency checks performed in the experiments confirmed the proportionality of the amplitude of the observed signal to the driving longitudinal electrical current and, in agreement with the prediction of Dyakonov and Perel2, a diminishing SHE signal due to the Hanle spin precession in applied in-plane magnetic fields. The amplitude of the measured edge spin polarizations in ref.21 reached ~0.1% (the measurements were performed at 50K). By fitting the measured spin accumulation to the solution of the drift-diffusion equations4,3, the SHE-induced transverse spin current was estimated to be ejs10nAm2 for a source longitudinal charge current jc50Am2. This corresponds to a spin Hall angle =ejs/jc2104. In the weak spinorbit coupling regime the spinorbit splitting of the quasiparticle bands is smeared out by disorder that favours the extrinsic SHE interpretation of the measured signal in ref.21. The absence of the intrinsic SHE was confirmed by measurements in the strained InGaAs sample, which showed no dependence of the SHE signal on the strain-induced anisotropies of the spinorbit-coupled band structure. A microdevice with two coplanar light-emitting diodes used by Wunderlich etal.22,23 to detect SHE is shown in Fig.2. Devices were patterned from a semiconductor heterostructure that comprised a modulation p-doped AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction on top of the structure, 90nm of intrinsic GaAs, and an n-doped AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction underneath. In the unetched part of the wafer, the top heterojunction was populated by 2D holes of a sheet density 21012cm2, whereas the 2D electron gas at the bottom heterojunction was almost depleted. The n-side of the coplanar pn junction was formed by removing the p-doped surface layer from part of the wafer,
b
1 N ( = 0) 0 1

Optical spin Hall devices in semiconductors

x (m) ^ x ^ y

3 ^ [100] z

0 y (m)

Figure 3 | Observation of iSHE using the two-colour optical pump-and-probe technique. a, Illustration of orthogonally polarized and 2 pulses producing a pure spin current (double headed arrow) along the beam polarization direction ( x). The charge current due to iSHE (curved arrows) along leads to electron accumulation near one edge of the illuminated region. b, Measured charge accumulation due to iSHE. N is the excess charge. Figure reproduced with permission from ref.31, 2006 APS.
384
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a
x RH2 RH1 VB RH2 RH1

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c
x IPH VB RH VG x IPH VB

IPH

10 RH () 5 0 RH1 IPH 0.5 + RH2 1.0 1.5 2.0 x (m) + +

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1 0 1 x =1 m

0.8 0.6 IPH (A) 0.4 0.2 0.0 0.5 0.0 1.0

10 0.0

3 0.5 VG (V)

Figure 4 | iSHE-based transistor. a, Schematic of the spin-injection Hall effect measurement set-up with optically injected spin-polarized electrical current propagating through the Hall bar and corresponding experimental Hall effect signals at crosses H1 and H2. The Hall resistances, RH=VH/IPH, where VH is the Hall voltage and IPH is the photocurrent for the two opposite helicities of the incident light are plotted as a function of the focused light spot position, that is, of the position of the injection point. VB is the pn junction bias voltage, + and are the helicity of the polarized light. IPH is independent of the helicity of the incident light and varies only weakly with the light spot position. b, Same as (a) for iSHE in which the electrical current is closed before the rst detecting Hall cross H1. c, Schematic of the spin Hall transistor and experimental Hall signals as a function of the gate voltage (VG) at a Hall cross placed behind the gate electrode for two light spot positions with a relative shift of 1m. The red and dashed black lines correspond to measurements with the relative shift of the laser spot of 1m. Figure reproduced with permission from ref.38, 2010 AAAS.

thereby populating the 2D electron gas. The 1.5- and 10-m-wide channels in the experimental devices22,23 were formed in the unetched part of the epilayer with the 2D hole gas. The etched-off regions of the wafer outside the channel make the channel edges act as coplanar pn diodes with an effective recombination width of ~100nm. The measured circular polarization of the electroluminescence peak (Fig.2d,e) reverses sign when the sign of the SHE-generating electrical current along the 2D hole channel is reversed. Also consistent with the SHE phenomenology, opposite polarizations were detected at opposite edges of the 2D hole gas channel. The amplitude of the measured SHE signals (at 4K) reached ~1% in these experiments. The 2D hole gas studied in refs 22,23 was in the strong spinorbit coupling regime, so/4, which favours the intrinsic SHE mechanism. A quantitative microscopic description of the measured edgespin-accumulation signal was developed and further experimentally tested23. Theoretical analysis pointed out that the length scale of the edge spin accumulation is defined in the strong spinorbit coupling regime by the spinorbit precession length Lso = Fso, where so= /so is the precession time of the spin in the internal spin orbit field and F is the Fermi velocity. With increasing strength of the spinorbit coupling, the edge-spin-accumulation region narrows down and, simultaneously, the amplitude of the spin polarization increases. For the experimental parameters of the 2D hole gas, Lso ~10nm and the calculated amplitude of the edge spin polarization was 8%, in good agreement with the 1% polarization of the measured electroluminescence signal, which was averaged over the ~100 nm sensitivity range of the coplanar light-emitting diode. Measurements in a device with a 10m wide 2D hole gas channel confirmed the theoretical expectation that the SHE edge spin accumulation is independent of the channel width (for widths larger than Lso)23. Subsequent magneto-optical measurements of SHE in the n-GaAs 3D epilayers have demonstrated experimentally that the SHE-induced spin accumulation is due to a transverse spin current, which can drive spin polarization tens of micrometres into a region in which there is minimal electric field25. The work proved experimentally that SHE can be used as a source of spin current generated in a non-magnetic system. A systematic doping dependence of the SHE angle was studied in n-GaAs 3D epilayers with electron densities nin
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the range 1.810163.31017cm3 and the results were found to be consistent with theoretical predictions for the extrinsic SHE30. The measured SHE angles of ~51045103 increased with increasing doping with a tendency to saturate at the high doping end of the studied set of samples at a value corresponding to ~1% edge spin polarization. It was concluded from this systematic analysis that the spin accumulation is reduced by an enhanced spin relaxation due to the DyakonovPerel spin-relaxation mechanism, whereas the spin current induced by SHE is enhanced with increasing n (ref.30). The spin Hall effect was also observed in other semiconductor systems including n-ZnSe 3D epilayers26, and InGaN/GaN superlattices27. The optically generated and detected iSHE was observed in an intrinsic GaAs (at 80K) using a two-colour optical coherence control technique with orthogonally polarized 1,430nm and 715nm fs pulses31. The method, shown in Fig.3a, is based on quantum interference between absorption pathways for one- and two-photon absorption connecting the same initial and final states, and allows for a pure spin-source current to be generated in an intrinsic semiconductor with no drift currents induced by an applied electric field, but rather with ballistic carriers decelerated by scattering. For generating a pure spin-current, a coherent pulse centred at frequency with phase is normally incident along the z direction and linearly polarized along the x direction that can be arbitrary with respect to the crystal axes as the effect is not strongly sensitive to the crystal orientation. A co-propagating 2 pulse with phase 2 is linearly polarized along the orthogonal direction. Excited spin-up electrons are polarized along z and move preferentially in one direction along x , whereas spin-down electrons move in the opposite direction. Together they generate a spin current jsz cos(), where =22. This pure spin-current is the source of a transverse charge current arising due to iSHE. The resulting charge accumulation was measured optically by differential transmission, that is, the transmission with and without pump beams, of a linearly polarized probe pulse. Consistent with the iSHE phenomenology, the excess charge (N) on one side and the deficit on the other side of the sample, shown in Fig.3b, was observed along the direction perpendicular to the driving spin current. The ballistic nature of transport in these experiments in intrinsic GaAs has been fully exploited in recent femtosecond time-resolved
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a
FM2 V FM1 I

NATURE MATERIALS DOI: 10.1038/NMAT3279

b
FM2 FM1 V

V+

I+

I+

V+

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LFM = 2 m 1 2 0.4 VII (m) RSHE Sin 0.2 B(T) 0.0 0.2 0.4

RSHE (m)

0.0

0 B M

0 VII (m) 0 1

2 0

0.1

2 4 2 0 B(T) 2 4 2 B(T) 3

Figure 5 | iSHE detection in a metal. a,b, Devices with electrical spin injection used for spin detection by iSHE (a) and by the non-local spin-valve effect (b). Arrows indicate the direction of current. The light-coloured electrodes in the micrographs are CoFe ferromagnets of width 400nm (FM1) and 250nm (FM2). The dark-coloured Hall cross is made of Al. c, Spin Hall resistance (open symbols) and magnetization angle (black line) measured as a function of the applied out-of-plane magnetic eld. Inset: Magnetization direction of the FM electrode relative to the substrate. d, Non-local spin-valve resistance V/I measured as a function of the out-of-plane magnetic eld (up to 3.25T in main gure and up to 0.5T in inset). Arrows show relative orientations of the magnetization of the injection and detection electrodes. Open symbols show the antiparallel conguration and lled symbols show the parallel conguration. LFM is the distance between the two ferromagnetic electrodes. Figure reproduced from ref.34, 2006 NPG.

measurements32. These measurements allowed the momentum scattering time 0.45ps to be inferred, and with a much shorter time delay of the probe pulses, the transverse charge current could be observed in real time. The measurements showed that the charge current was generated well before the first scattering event, providing a direct demonstration of the intrinsic iSHE. A traditional way of generating spin-polarized photo-carriers in semiconductors is by absorption of circularly polarized light 63. Because of the optical selection rules, the out-of-plane spin polarization of photo-carriers is determined in this technique by the helicity and degree of the circular polarization of vertically incident light. Wunderlich etal.37,38 used the same type of a lateral pn diode they had used previously 22,23 to utilize optical spin injection by a circularly polarized laser beam for observing the iSHE and for employing the effect in experimental opto-spintronic and spin-transistor devices. In their original SHE measurements22,23, the pn junctions were fabricated along the edges of the 2D hole channel and under forward bias could detect the spin state of recombining electrons and holes through polarized electroluminescence. In their later work37,38, on the other hand, the spin Hall channel was fabricated in the etched part of the epilayer with the 2D electron gas, the channel was oriented perpendicular to the pn junction, and the diode was under zero or reverse bias, operating as a photocell as shown in Fig.4. The optical activity of the lateral diode confined to a submicro metre depletion region, combined with a focused (~1m) laser beam, allowed for a well-localized injection of spin-polarized photo-electrons into
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the planar 2D electron gas channel. The Hall signals were detected electrically on multiple Hall-crosses patterned along the channel. Two regimes of operation of the device were distinguished: One was referred to as the spin-injection Hall effect regime, in which the reverse-bias charge current is drained behind the Hall crosses at the opposite end of the channel from the pn junction injection point (Fig.4a). The other regime corresponds to the iSHE measurement, because in this case the charge current is drained before the Hall crosses, allowing only the pure spin-current to diffuse further in the channel (Fig.4b). In both cases the measured transverse electrical signals were consistent with the spin Hall phenomenology 37,38. The sign of the voltage was opposite for opposite helicities of the incident light, that is, opposite spin polarizations of injected photo-electrons. Moreover, the amplitude of the electrical signals was found to depend linearly on the degree of circular polarization of the light, rendering the device an electrical polarimeter 37. The electrical signals were observable over a wide temperature range with spin Hall angles of 103102. The measured 2D electron gas was in the weak spinorbit coupling regime, so/~101, and the measured data were consistent with the extrinsic spin Hall mechanism37. A distinct feature of the iSHE experiments in the 2D electron gas is the observed spin precession due to internal Rashba and Dresselhaus spinorbit fields37,38. As the spin diffusion length scales approximately 38 as Lso2/w, it was possible to observe a few spin precessions in channels of a width w=1m for Lso~1m of the studied 2D electron gas. The corresponding oscillations of the spin Hall
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voltages were consistently observed by measuring at different Hall crosses along the channel or by shifting the laser spot, that is, the spin-injection point (Fig. 4). The lateral iSHE channels also allow top-gate electrodes to be placed in between the Hall crosses as shown in Fig.4c. (The gates were formed by unetched regions of the wafer.) The strength of the Rashba and Dresselhaus spinorbit fields and, therefore, also the spin precession can be manipulated electrically in the device as shown in Fig.4c. To demonstrate an AND logic functionality, two gates were fabricated on top of the channel and the Hall electrical signal was measured at a cross placed behind both gates. Intermediate gate voltages on both gates represented the input value 1 and gave the largest electrical iSHE signal, representing the output value 1. When a large reverse gate voltage was applied to any of the two gates, representing input value 0, the electrical iSHE signal disappeared, that is, the output was 0.

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magnetic fields, the CoFe magnetization is rotated out-of-plane and, correspondingly, the spin-valve signal saturates at the large positive value. Figure5a,c shows spin injection and detection measurements when the electrical current is directed from the injection electrode FM1 to the right, away from the Al Hall cross, causing a pure spincurrent to diffuse towards the cross. Consistent with the iSHE phenomenology, the measured transverse voltages on the Hall cross are proportional to the out-of-plane component of the spin polarization of the injected spin current. The spin Hall angle ~13104, obtained by fitting the measured Hall voltages to the solution of the diffusion equation for the injected pure spin-current, compares well with the theoretical estimates for the extrinsic iSHE in Al (ref.34). Kimuraetal.7 studied iSHE and SHE in one NiFe/Cu/Pt structure whose geometry is shown in the insets of Fig.6. First they used the NiFe electrode as a spin injector and measured iSHE in the Pt strip (Fig.6a). Then the experimental geometry was inverted and the driving electrical current was passed through the Pt strip, generating a transverse spin current by SHE in Pt. The spin current was detected by measuring the non-local spin-valve signal on the NiFe electrode (Fig. 6b). Same spin Hall conductivities were obtained from both the inverse and direct spin Hall measurements. The data provided experimental evidence of the utility of SHE and iSHE as a spin injection and detection tool. In parallel with the seminal study of iSHE driven by electrical spin injection from a ferromagnetic contact 34, Saitoh etal.33 applied the ferromagnetic resonance spin-pumping method44 of spin injection from NiFe into a Pt layer. The physical mechanism of the spinpumping technique is in the transfer of angular momentum from the precessing magnetization to the conduction electrons. This transfer, which contributes to magnetization damping, polarizes the spins of conduction electrons and when a paramagnetic metal is connected to the ferromagnet the spin polarization may propagate into the metal as a pure spin-current. Spin pumping has a form of an enhanced Gilbert damping in the LandauLifshitz equation, jss m m/t. The polarization vector s of the spin current is perpendicular to the instantaneous magnetization direction m and to its time derivative (m/t). This means that the spin current has a time-independent component along the equilibrium magnetization direction (Fig.7a). The measured ferromagnetic resonance spectrum of the NiFe/Pt sample is compared with a reference NiFe sample in Fig.7b. The spectral width of the NiFe/Pt sample is larger than that of the reference NiFe film, which demonstrates the presence of the spinpumping effect in the NiFe/Pt. The induced voltage signal measured across the sample along an axis parallel to the NiFe/Pt interface
b
0.2 Vs M 0.1 le

Metal devices with ferromagnetic contacts

Valenzuela and Tinkham34 performed experiments (at 4K) in which a spin current injected from a ferromagnetic electrode into a nonmagnetic metal strip was detected by iSHE and by the non-local spin-valve effect using a ferromagnetic probe electrode. The electrical injection of the spin current results from a non-equilibrium spatially dependent splitting of spin-up and spin-down electrochemical potentials on either side of the electrically biased ferromagnet/ normal metal contact 6. In the device shown in Fig.5, the ferromagnetic CoFe electrode FM1 is used to inject spin-polarized electrons through an Al2O3 tunnel barrier into an Al channel. The tunnel barrier is important because it enhances the polarization of the injected electrons. In Fig.5b, the electrical current is directed from the injection electrode FM1 to the left, away from the ferromagnetic CoFe electrode FM2, causing a pure spin-current to diffuse towards FM2. The non-local spin-valve voltage is then measured between the ferromagnetic probe FM2 and the right side of the Al strip. The CoFe electrodes are magnetized in the plane at zero magnetic field owing to the strong thin-film shape anisotropy. The large positive nonlocal spin-valve voltage at zero magnetic field shown in Fig.5d, corresponds to parallel magnetizations of the injection and detection CoFe electrodes, that is, parallel spin polarization in the Al channel with the magnetization in the FM2 probe above it. The large negative spin-valve voltage at zero field corresponds to the antiparallel configuration. At weak out-of-plane magnetic fields the polarization of the ferromagnetic electrodes remains in-plane and the measured spin-valve signal shows the in-plane component of the injected spins in the Al channel, which precesses owing to the Hanle effect. At large
a
0.1

0.05 Vc /l (m) RSHE H 0.05 M 0.1 200 77 K 100 0 0 H (mT) 100 200 0.2 200 le Vc Vs /l (m) H

0 0.1 77 K 100 0 0 H (mT) 100 200

Figure 6 | iSHE and SHE detection in a metal. a, The change in Hall resistance RSHE= Vc / I due to iSHE at 77K. The black and grey curves show measurements for the two opposite sweeps of the magnetic eld. b, Spin-accumulation signal Vs / I generated by SHE at 77K. Insets: measurement set-up. NiFe, Cu and Pt are in grey, pink and yellow, respectively. 0H is the applied magnetic eld, M is the magnetization of NiFe and Ie is the applied electrical current. Figure reproduced with permission from ref.7 2007 APS.
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is shown in Fig. 7c. Saitoh et al.33 demonstrated that the signal is present only when the spin-polarization vector of the injected spin current has a component perpendicular to the measured electric field across the sample, consistent with iSHE. Mosendz et al.47,48 applied the ferromagnetic resonance spinpumping method to determine the spin Hall angles in a series of non-magnetic metals. Ando et al.46 demonstrated electrical detection of a spin-wave resonance in nanostructured NiFe/Pt samples. By inverting the experiment, Liuetal.51 applied a microwave frequency charge current in the plane of a NiFe/Pt sample and observed the ferromagnetic resonance in NiFe. It was an all-electrical magnetic resonance experiment because the oscillating magnetization led to an oscillation of the bilayer resistance owing to the anisotropic magnetoresistance of NiFe. The output d.c. voltage signal was generated across the sample from the mixing of the microwave current and the oscillating resistance, similar to the signal that arises from spintransfer-torque-induced ferromagnetic resonance in spin valves and magnetic tunnel junctions51.

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p-type regime. This resulted in a strong modulation of the non-local voltage (Fig.8a). In the p-regime, where the spinorbit coupling is strong, the signal is at least one order of magnitude larger than in the weakly spinorbit coupled n-regime. The H-structures consisted of legs 1m long and 200nm wide, with the connecting part being 200nm wide and 200nm long. The estimated mean free path in the system was 2.5m, that is, the samples were well within the quasiballistic regime. Detailed numerical calculations confirmed that the observed spin Hall signals had the ballistic intrinsic origin5. The hybrid semiconductor/metal-ferromagnet structures have for a long time suffered from the resistance mismatch problem57. As the spin transport relies on different conductivities for spin-up and spin-down electrons and is governed by the least conductive part of the device, the effects are weak in devices in which the non-magnetic semiconductor with equal spin-up and spin-down conductivities dominates the resistance of the device58. The introduction of a highly resistive tunnel barrier between the ferromagnetic metal electrode and the semiconductor channel can solve the problem58,59. (The tunnelling resistance is spin dependent because of the exchange-split bands on the ferromagnet side of the tunnel junction.) Garlid et al.60 reported an all-electrical measurement of SHE in epitaxial Fe/InGaAs heterostructures with an n-type InGaAs semiconductor channel and a Schottky tunnel barrier at the Fe/InGaAs interface. A transverse spin current generated by an ordinary charge current flowing in the InGaAs was detected by measuring the spin accumulation at the edges of the channel. An important aspect of the experiment was the ability to tune the strength of the spinorbit interaction between different samples by changing the In content, and to vary the conductivity of the samples. This allowed the different contributions to the spin Hall conductivity to be extracted. As expected in n-doped 3D semiconductors, the observed spin Hall conductivity was dominated by the extrinsic mechanism. Olejnik et al.61 demonstrated the iSHE detection in a semi conductor combined with an electrical spin injection and manipulation. In a GaAs microchannel with an Fe Schottky injection contact, the spin current in a lateral semiconductor channel

Semiconductor devices operating without light

Brne et al.5 performed a non-local electrical measurement in nanoscale H-shaped structures built on high-mobility HgTe/ (Hg,Cd)Te quantum wells with a top-gate electrode. The experiment was in the spirit of the original proposal of Hirsch3 for simultaneously employing SHE and iSHE to detect the phenomenon electrically. The geometry of the microdevice64 and the measured iSHE signals are shown in Fig.8a. The idea behind these transport measurements is as follows. When an electric current flows in one of the legs of the H-bar structure, a transverse spin current due to SHE is induced in the connecting part. Subsequently, this spin current produces, owing to iSHE, a non-local voltage difference in the opposite leg of the H-bar structure, which can be measured by a voltmeter. Sweeping the gate voltage in the sample allowed the strength of the Rashba spinorbit splitting to be varied by both the electrical field across the quantum well and the Fermi level position in the quantum well. In the sample it was possible to electrically tune the carrier density from strongly n-type, through insulating, down to a
a
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V Ni81Fe19 Pt Magnetization Magnetization Ni81Fe19 Spin pumping Pt Js Jc Js Jc H

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0 Ni81Fe19

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Figure 7 | Observation of iSHE in a metal device with spin injection from a ferromagnet by the ferromagnetic resonance spin pumping. a, Schematic of the NiFe/Pt sample system used in the study and of the spin-pumping effect and iSHE. Jc is the charge current, Js is the spin current and is the spin orientation of injected electrons. b, Magnetic-eld dependence of the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) signal for the NiFe/Pt bilayer lm and a Ni lm. I is the microwave absorption intensity. c, Magnetic-eld dependence of dV(H)/dH for the NiFe/Pt sample. V is the electrical-potential difference between the electrodes on the Pt layer. Figure reproduced with permission from ref.33, 2006 AIP.
388
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NATURE MATERIALS DOI: 10.1038/NMAT3279

a
500 pConductor 400 Insulator nConductor I

INSIGHT | REVIEW ARTICLES

b
IB VH

ID = 0 ID VNL ID = +100 A ID = 100 A

R21,36 ()

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Figure 8 | Electrical spin Hall devices in semiconductors. a, Spin injection by SHE and detection by iSHE in a gated H-shaped device. Inset: schemtic showing the measurement set-up for current injection (I) and voltage probes (V). The black curve shows the non-local iSHE resistance signal. The blue curve indicates the residual voltage owing to current spreading. bd, Semiconductor iSHE device with electrical modulation of the spin signal. Schematic showing the experimental set-up (b). Experimental non-local spin-valve (VNL) and iSHE (VH) signals in the in-plane eld Bx measured at constant spininjection bias current IB=300A and at three different drift currents ID depicted in b (c,d). Figures reproduced from: a, ref.5 2010NPG; bd, ref.61.

was detected by iSHE and the spin polarization was simultaneously measured using an additional Fe electrode. The spins in the channel were manipulated by the Hanle spin precession induced by an applied magnetic field and by a drift induced by an applied electrical bias65. As shown in Fig.8bd, the output iSHE and non-local spinvalve signals are suppressed or enhanced depending on the electrical bias, that is, the device acts as an electrically controlled spin modulator. Qualitatively, the modulation of the spin signal can be explained by a shift of the injected spin polarization profile from the injection electrode in the direction towards the detection electrodes in the case of the positive drift current or away from the detectors in the case of the negative drift. Electrical tuning of the spin signal in a semiconductor has also been recently demonstrated by Ando and colleagues62. In this experiment, spins were injected from NiFe into GaAs through a Schottky contact using ferromagnetic resonance spin pumping. Tuning of the spin-pumping efficiency was achieved by applying a bias voltage across the NiFe/GaAs Schottky barrier and interpreted as a consequence of a suppressed or enhanced spin coupling across the interface. The ferromagnet/semiconductor spin-pumping experiments in ref. 62 were also performed on samples with an ohmic contact between NiFe and GaAs. The measurements demonstrated that the resistance mismatch problem in ohmic metal/semiconductor spininjection devices can be circumvented by using the ferromagnetic resonance spin-pumping technique.

Outlook

Experiments in spin Hall devices performed so far have established the basic physics of SHE and iSHE, showed that the intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms can contribute to the phenomenon, and that SHE and iSHE are universal to metal and semiconductor systems (3D and 2D) with spinorbit coupling. As the strength of the spinorbit coupling increases, the spin current that arises from SHE increases. At the same time, however, the spin lifetime decreases. Finding the optimal compromise between these two counteracting effects of the spinorbit coupling remains an important open
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problem in the field. Research directions recently initiated5,37,38 are among the experiments that may contribute to a better understanding of this problem. They showed that spin Hall devices can operate in the ballistic regime, that is, when the typical dimensions of the device are smaller than the scattering mean free path5. Also, for the diffusive spin Hall devices it was pointed out that there are regimes in which spin coherence can be strongly enhanced38. One regime is when the width of the channel is comparable to or smaller than the precession length in the internal spinorbit field66. In the other regime, the width of the channel is not relevant, and enhanced spin coherence occurs as a result of the single-particle transport analogue of the spin helix state67,66 realized at 2D Rashba and Dresselhaus spinorbit fields of equal or similar strengths. The utility of SHE and iSHE as an electrical spin injector and detector in non-magnetic systems can allow a variety of new spintronic functionalities to be explored. One of the recently proposed areas is opto-spintronics. It was shown, for example, that iSHE acts as a direct electrical detection tool for the polarization of light 37,56, and because of the universality of the spin Hall phenomenon, the approach can be implemented in semiconductors active over a wide range of wavelengths. Other proposed applications include spinphotovoltaic cells, switches, invertors and interconnects. Several types of devices combining electrical spin detection by iSHE with electrical spin manipulation have been recently demonstrated, which makes spin transistors another potentially fruitful area of spin Hall research. Some devices are reported to act as a spin analogue of a field-effect transistor 5,38,62. The gate electrode in these devices can control the spinorbit coupling 5,38 or the interfacial spin interactions62 by changing the electric field strength across the film or the Fermi level position. The device reported in ref. 61 is different as it uses an additional drift current to control the output spin signal. Finally we recall the research direction suggested by recent reports of the SHE-controlled magnetization dynamics4951. These are the pure spin-current analogues of the spin-transfer-torque phenomena that have for decades played a key role in basic spintronics research and in bringing spintronics to commercial applications68.
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References

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from EU grants ERC Advanced Grant 268066-0MSPIN and FP7-215368 SemiSpinNet, and from Czech Republic grant AV0Z10100521 Praemium Academiae.

Additional information

The authors declare no competing financial interests. Reprints and permissions information is available online at http://www.nature.com/reprints. Correspondence should be addressed to T.J.
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