TY  - JOUR
AU  - Long, Nguyen H.
AU  - Mavropoulos, Phivos
AU  - Zimmermann, Bernd
AU  - Bauer, David
AU  - Blügel, Stefan
AU  - Mokrousov, Yuriy
TI  - Spin relaxation and spin Hall transport in 5d transition-metal ultrathin films
JO  - Physical review / B
VL  - 90
IS  - 6
SN  - 1098-0121
CY  - College Park, Md.
PB  - APS
M1  - FZJ-2014-04170
SP  - 064406
PY  - 2014
AB  - The spin relaxation induced by the Elliott-Yafet mechanism and the extrinsic spin Hall conductivity due to the skew scattering are investigated in 5d transition-metal ultrathin films with self-adatom impurities as scatterers. The values of the Elliott-Yafet parameter and of the spin-flip relaxation rate reveal a correlation with each other that is in agreement with the Elliott approximation. At 10-layer thickness, the spin-flip relaxation time in 5d transition-metal films is quantitatively reported about few hundred nanoseconds at atomic percent. This time scale is one and two orders of magnitude shorter than the values in Au and Cu thin films, respectively. The anisotropy effect of the Elliott-Yafet parameter and of the spin-flip relaxation rate with respect to the direction of the spin-quantization axis in relation to the crystallographic axes is also analyzed. We find that the anisotropy of the spin-flip relaxation rate is enhanced due to the Rashba surface states on the Fermi surface, reaching values as high as 97% in 10-layer Hf(0001) film or 71% in 10-layer W(110) film. Finally, the spin Hall conductivity as well as the spin Hall angle due to the skew scattering off self-adatom impurities are calculated using the Boltzmann approach. Our calculations employ a relativistic version of the first-principles full-potential Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker Green function method.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000339994200005
DO  - DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.90.064406
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/154961
ER  -