Giant Enhancement of Intrinsic Spin Hall Conductivity in $β$ Tungsten via Substitutional Doping (1712.05516v1)

Abstract: A key challenge in manipulating the magnetization in heavy-metal/ferromagnetic bilayers via the spin-orbit torque is to identify materials that exhibit an efficient charge-to-spin current conversion. Ab initio electronic structure calculations reveal that the intrinsic spin Hall conductivity (SHC) for pristine $\beta$-W is about sixty percent larger than that of $\alpha$-W. More importantly, we demonstrate that the SHC of $\beta$-W can be enhanced via Ta alloying. This is corroborated by spin Berry curvature calculations of W$_{1-x}$Ta$_x$ ($x$ $\sim$ 12.5%) alloys which show a giant enhancement of spin Hall angle of up to $\approx$ $-0.5$. The underlying mechanism is the synergistic behavior of the SHC and longitudinal conductivity with Fermi level position. These findings, not only pave the way for enhancing the intrinsic spin Hall effect in $\beta$-W, but also provide new guidelines to exploit substitutional alloying to tailor the spin Hall effect in various materials.