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American Physical Society, Physical Review Letters, 16(114), 2015

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.114.166602

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Charge-to-Spin Conversion and Spin Diffusion in Bi/Ag Bilayers Observed by Spin-Polarized Positron Beam

Journal article published in 2015 by H. J. Zhang, S. Yamamoto, B. Gu ORCID, H. Li, M. Maekawa, Y. Fukaya, A. Kawasuso
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Postprint: archiving allowed
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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Charge-to-spin conversion induced by the Rashba-Edelstein effect was directly observed for the first time in samples with no magnetic layer. A spin-polarized positron beam was used to probe the spin polarization of the outermost surface electrons of Bi/Ag/Al_{2}O_{3} and Ag/Bi/Al_{2}O_{3} when charge currents were only associated with the Ag layers. An opposite surface spin polarization was found between Bi/Ag/Al_{2}O_{3} and Ag/Bi/Al_{2}O_{3} samples with the application of a charge current in the same direction. The surface spin polarizations of both systems decreased exponentially with the outermost layer thickness, suggesting the occurrence of spin diffusion from the Bi/Ag interface to the outermost surfaces. This work provides a new technique to measure spin diffusion length.