Atomic scale control of spin current transmission at interfaces

Abstract: Spin transmission at ferromagnet/heavy metal interfaces is of vital importance for many spintronic devices. Usually the spin current transmission is limited by the spin mixing conductance and loss mechanisms such as spin memory loss. In order to understand these effects, we study the interface transmission when an insulating interlayer is inserted between the ferromagnet and the heavy metal. For this we measure the inverse spin Hall voltage generated from optically injected spin current pulses as well as the magnitude of the spin pumping using ferromagnetic resonance. From our results we conclude that significant spin memory loss only occurs for 5d metals with less than half filled d-shell.