Large interfacial contribution to ultrafast THz emission by inverse spin Hall effect in CoFeB/Ta heterostructure

Abstract

Summary: Ultrafast THz radiation generation from ferromagnetic/nonmagnetic (FM/NM) spintronic heterostructures generally exploits the spin-charge conversion within the nonmagnetic layer and its interface with the ferromagnetic layer. Various possible sub-contributions to the underlying mechanism need to be exploited not only for investigating the intricacies at the fundamental level in the material properties themselves but also for improving their performance for broadband and high-power THz emission. Here, we report ultrafast THz emission from (CoFeB,Fe)/(Ta,Pt) bilayers at varying sample temperatures to unravel the role of intrinsic and extrinsic spin-charge conversion processes through the extracted values of spin-Hall conductivities. An enhanced THz emission along with temperature-dependent THz signal polarity reversal is observed in the case of annealed CoFeB/Ta. These results demonstrate a large interfacial contribution to the overall spin-Hall angle arising from the modified interface in the annealed CoFeB/Ta.

Keywords

• Physics
• Hall effect
• Radiation physics