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Ultrafast spin current generated from an antiferromagnet

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 388–394 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Antiferromagnets (AFMs) have the potential to push spintronic devices from a static condition or gigahertz frequency range to the terahertz range for the sake of high-speed processing. However, the insensitivity of AFMs to magnetic fields makes the manipulation of spin currents difficult. The ultrafast generation of the spin current in ferromagnet/heavy-metal (HM) structures has received a lot of attention in recent years, but whether a similar scenario can be observed in an AFM/HM system is still unknown. Here, we show the optical generation of ultrafast spin current in an AFM/HM heterostructure at zero external magnetic field and at room temperature by detecting the associated terahertz emission. We believe that this is a common phenomenon in antiferromagnets with strong nonlinear optical effects. Our results open an avenue of fundamental research into antiferromagnetism and a route to AFM spintronic devices.

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Fig. 1: Experimental setup and THz spectrum.
Fig. 2: Effect of normal metal layers and state of laser polarization.
Fig. 3: Impact of sample azimuth and laser polarization.
Fig. 4: Effect of crystallographic orientation of NiO.

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Data availability

Source data are provided for this paper. All other data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 61521001, 61731010, 61671234, 11727808 and 11674159), National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant nos. 2017YFA0700202 and 2017YFA0303202), and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant no. BK20190300). It was also partially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and by the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Techniques for Manipulating Electromagnetic Waves. We acknowledge B. G. Wang and C. Zhang for their discussion on the mechanism of the spin current generation. We thank Y. F. Nie for helping to confirm the crystallographic orientation of the sample through the φ-scan measurement.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Hongsong Qiu and Lifan Zhou.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute of Superconductor Electronics (RISE), School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, PR China

    Hongsong Qiu, Caihong Zhang, Jingbo Wu, Biaobing Jin, Jian Chen & Peiheng Wu

  2. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory for Nanotechnology, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures and Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, PR China

    Lifan Zhou, Yuanzhe Tian & Di Wu

  3. State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, PR China

    Shaodong Cheng & Shaobo Mi

  4. Shanghai Ultra-precision Optical Manufacturing Engineering Research Center, and Key Laboratory of Micro and Nano Photonic Structures (Ministry of Education), Department of Optical Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, PR China

    Haibin Zhao

  5. Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, PR China

    Qi Zhang

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  1. Hongsong Qiu
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Contributions

D.W. and B.J. conceived and instructed this work. L.Z. and Y.T. fabricated and characterized the AFM/NM samples. H.Q. built the terahertz emission setup on the basis of preliminary work by C.Z. and performed the terahertz experiments. S.C. and S.M. provided the high-quality HAADF-STEM image. H.Z. and Q.Z. provided very revealing comments on the physical mechanism of the ultrafast interaction between light and matter. J.W., J.C. and P.W. contributed to the electrodynamic explanations for the THz experiments. H.Q. and L.Z. analysed experimental data and wrote the manuscript with contributions from all of the authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Di Wu or Biaobing Jin.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–5 and Figs. 1–9.

Supplementary Data

The reflective high energy diffraction patterns and X-ray diffraction pattern of samples.

Supplementary Data

The X-ray diffraction φ-scan of samples.

Supplementary Data

The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of samples.

Supplementary Data

The polarization state of THz emission from the samples.

Supplementary Data

The dependence of THz waveforms on the sample orientation.

Supplementary Data

The influence of the field-cooling process of samples.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

A typical terahertz waveform and its spectrum.

Source Data Fig. 2

Effect of the NM layers and the state of the laser polarization.

Source Data Fig. 3

Impact of the sample azimuth and laser polarization.

Source Data Fig. 4

Effect of the crystallographic orientation of NiO.

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Cite this article

Qiu, H., Zhou, L., Zhang, C. et al. Ultrafast spin current generated from an antiferromagnet. Nat. Phys. 17, 388–394 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01061-7

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