Large spin-charge interconversion induced by interfacial spin-orbit\n coupling in a highly conducting all-metallic system

Abstract

Spin-charge interconversion in systems with spin-orbit coupling has provided\na new route for the generation and detection of spin currents in functional\ndevices for memory and logic such as spin-orbit torque switching in magnetic\nmemories or magnetic state reading in spin-based logic. Disentangling the bulk\n(spin Hall effect) from the interfacial (inverse spin galvanic effect)\ncontribution has been a common issue to properly quantify the spin-charge\ninterconversion in these systems, being the case of Au paradigmatic. Here, we\nobtain a large spin-charge interconversion at a highly conducting Au/Cu\ninterface which is experimentally shown to arise from the inverse spin galvanic\neffect of the interface and not from the spin Hall effect of bulk Au. We use\ntwo parameters independent of the microscopic details to properly quantify the\nspin-charge interconversion and the spin losses due to the interfacial\nspin-orbit coupling, providing an adequate benchmarking to compare with any\nspin-charge interconversion system. The good performance of this metallic\ninterface, not based in Bi, opens the path to the use of much simpler\nlight/heavy metal systems.\n