Spintronics, or spin electronics, involves the study of active control and manipulation of spin degrees of freedom in solid-state systems. This article reviews the current status of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling. The authors discuss in detail spin decoherence mechanisms in metals and semiconductors. Various theories of spin injection and spin-polarized transport are applied to hybrid structures relevant to spin-based devices and fundamental studies of materials properties. Experimental work is reviewed with the emphasis on projected applications, in which external electric and magnetic fields and illumination by light will be used to control spin and charge dynamics to create new functionalities not feasible or ineffective with conventional electronics.

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Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

Nanocrystals (NCs) discussed in this Review are tiny crystals of metals, semiconductors, and magnetic material consisting of hundreds to a few thousand atoms each. Their size ranges from 2-3 to about 20 nm. What is special about this size regime that placed NCs among the hottest research topics of the last decades? The quantum mechanical coupling * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dvtalapin@uchicago.edu. † The University of Chicago. ‡ Argonne National Lab. Chem. Rev. 2010, 110, 389–458 389

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Prospects of Colloidal Nanocrystals for Electronic and Optoelectronic Applications

Ever since its discovery, the Berry phase has permeated through all branches of physics. Over the last three decades, it was gradually realized that the Berry phase of the electronic wave function can have a profound effect on material properties and is responsible for a spectrum of phenomena, such as ferroelectricity, orbital magnetism, various (quantum/anomalous/spin) Hall effects, and quantum charge pumping. This progress is summarized in a pedagogical manner in this review. We start with a brief summary of necessary background, followed by a detailed discussion of the Berry phase effect in a variety of solid state applications. A common thread of the review is the semiclassical formulation of electron dynamics, which is a versatile tool in the study of electron dynamics in the presence of electromagnetic fields and more general perturbations. Finally, we demonstrate a re-quantization method that converts a semiclassical theory to an effective quantum theory. It is clear that the Berry phase should be added as a basic ingredient to our understanding of basic material properties.

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Berry phase effects on electronic properties

Spin currents can apply useful torques in spintronic devices. The spin Hall effect has been proposed as a source of spin current, but its modest strength has limited its usefulness. We report a giant spin Hall effect (SHE) in β-tantalum that generates spin currents intense enough to induce efficient spin-torque switching of ferromagnets at room temperature. We quantify this SHE by three independent methods and demonstrate spin-torque switching of both out-of-plane and in-plane magnetized layers. We furthermore implement a three-terminal device that uses current passing through a tantalum-ferromagnet bilayer to switch a nanomagnet, with a magnetic tunnel junction for read-out. This simple, reliable, and efficient design may eliminate the main obstacles to the development of magnetic memory and nonvolatile spin logic technologies.

Spin-torque switching with the giant spin hall effect of tantalum

In solid-state materials with strong relativistic spin-orbit coupling, charge currents generate transverse spin currents. The associated spin Hall and inverse spin Hall effects distinguish between charge and spin current where electron charge is a conserved quantity but its spin direction is not. This review provides a theoretical and experimental treatment of this subfield of spintronics, beginning with distinct microscopic mechanisms seen in ferromagnets and concluding with a discussion of optical-, transport-, and magnetization-dynamics-based experiments closely linked to the microscopic and phenomenological theories presented.

Spin Hall effects

A Josephson current through a half-metallic ferromagnet between two conventional superconductors is theoretically studied. The spin dynamics such as magnon excitation plays a crucial role not only for the conversion between spin-singlet and spin-triplet pairs but also for the formation of the composite state of a triplet Cooper pair and magnon, by which the Josephson current flows between the superconductors. We propose the supercurrent pumping driven by the coherent precession of the magnetization by tuning the microwave frequency to the ferromagnetic resonance frequency in a ferromagnetic Josephson junction.

Supercurrent pumping in Josephson junctions with a half-metallic ferromagnet.

We have measured the magnetoresistance and de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) oscillation of URu 2 Si 2 . From the results of the magnetoresistance measurement, URu 2 Si 2 is concluded to be a compensated metal with closed Fermi surfaces. The dHvA branch, which corresponds to a nearly spherical Fermi surface, has been detected in both the normal and superconducting mixed states. The Dingle temperature or the electron scattering rate is found to be strongly enhanced and the cyclotron effective mass to be correspondingly reduced in the mixed state.

de Haas-van Alphen oscillation in the superconducting mixed state of URu2Si2

We report a systematic study on Edelstein magnetoresistance (Edelstein MR) in $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{o}}_{25}\mathrm{F}{\mathrm{e}}_{75}\text{/}\mathrm{Cu}\text{/}\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{i}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ heterostructures with a strong spin-orbit interaction at the $\mathrm{Cu}\text{/}\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{i}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ interface. We succeed in observing a significant dependence of the Edelstein MR on both Cu layer thickness and temperature, and also develop a general analytical model considering distinct bulk and interface contributions on spin relaxation. Our analysis, based on the above model, quantitatively illustrates a unique property of the spin transport near the Rashba interface, revealing a prominent role of the spin relaxation process by determining the ratios of the spin relaxation inside and outside the interface. We further find the characteristic spin transport is unaffected by temperature. Our results provide an essential tool for exploring the transport in a system with spin-momentum-locked two-dimensional states.

Evaluation of bulk-interface contributions to Edelstein magnetoresistance at metal/oxide interfaces

A theory of crossed Andreev reflection in structures consisting of a superconductor with two ferromagnetic leads is presented. The electric current due to the crossed Andreev reflection strongly depends on the relative orientation of the magnetization of two ferromagnetic leads. It is shown that the dependence of the electric current and magnetoresistance on the distance between two ferromagnetic leads is understood by considering the interference between the wave functions in ferromagnets. The current and magnetoresistance are calculated as functions of the exchange field and height of the interfacial barriers.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0307307.pdf

Crossed Andreev reflection in structures consisting of a superconductor with ferromagnetic leads

We have studied the spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR), the magnetoresistance within the plane transverse to the current flow, of Pt/Co bilayers. We find that the SMR increases with increasing Co thickness: the effective spin Hall angle for bilayers with thick Co exceeds the reported values of Pt when a conventional drift-diffusion model is used. An extended model including spin transport within the Co layer cannot account for the large SMR. To identify its origin, contributions from other sources are studied. For most bilayers, the SMR increases with decreasing temperature and increasing magnetic field, indicating that magnon-related effects in the Co layer play little role. Without the Pt layer, we do not observe the large SMR found for the Pt/Co bilayers with thick Co. Implementing the effect of the so-called interface magnetoresistance and the textured induced anisotropic scattering cannot account for the Co thickness dependent SMR. Since the large SMR is present for W/Co but its magnitude reduces in W/CoFeB, we infer its origin is associated with a particular property of Co.

Saburo Takahashi

Papers

Supercurrent pumping in Josephson junctions with a half-metallic ferromagnet.

de Haas-van Alphen oscillation in the superconducting mixed state of URu2Si2

Evaluation of bulk-interface contributions to Edelstein magnetoresistance at metal/oxide interfaces

Crossed Andreev reflection in structures consisting of a superconductor with ferromagnetic leads

Anomalous spin Hall magnetoresistance in Pt/Co bilayers