| AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session MI-TuM |
| Session: | Oxides, Fluorides, and Spin Structures |
| Presenter: | Markus Donath, Muenster University, Germany |
| Authors: | M. Donath, Muenster University, Germany S.N.P. Wissing, Muenster University, Germany K.T. Ritter, Muenster University, Germany A.B. Schmidt, Muenster University, Germany P. Krueger, Muenster University, Germany |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
In view of spintronics applications, spin-polarized valleys are a key issue to realize spin-polarized currents. To date, spin-polarized valleys have been discovered in surface states at high-symmetry points in momentum space (see, e.g., [1]). We propose and have discovered an alternative way of producing spin-polarized valleys via hybridization gaps induced by spin-orbit interaction. So far, spin-orbit-influenced hybridization led to spin-dependent avoided band crossings, yet with no energy gap of spin-dependent size, i.e., no spin-polarized valleys.
We investigated the unoccupied electronic structure of Pb/Cu(111) by spin- and angle-resolved inverse photoemission. In these studies, we discovered a hybridization gap with spin-dependent size, about 200 meV for the one and even larger than 500 meV for the other spin direction, although not in a fundamental band gap at the Fermi level. Yet more importantly, we revealed the mechanism behind the formation of this spin-dependent valley-like gap structure by a tight-binding model based on ab initio calculations: The way of how adlayer and substrate states interact [2].
[1] K. Sakamoto et al., Nat. Commun. 4, 2073 (2013).
[2] S.N.P. Wissing et al., Phys. Rev. B (Rapid Communications), accepted (2015).