The crystal chemistry of spin crossover (SCO) behavior in coordination compounds can potentially be in association with smart materials—promising materials for applications as components of memory ...devices, displays, sensors and mechanical devices and, especially, actuators, such as artificial muscles. This Special Issue is devoted to various aspects of SCO and related research, comprising 18 interesting original papers on valuable and important SCO topics. Significant and fundamental scientific attention has been focused on the SCO phenomena in a wide research range of fields of fundamental chemical and physical and related sciences, containing the interdisciplinary regions of chemical and physical sciences related to the SCO phenomena. Coordination materials with bistable systems between the LS and the HS states are usually triggered by external stimuli, such as temperature, light, pressure, guest molecule inclusion, soft X-ray, and nuclear decay. Since the first Hofmann-like spin crossover (SCO) behavior in {Fe(py)2Ni(CN)4}n (py = pyridine) was demonstrated, this crystal chemistry motif has been frequently used to design Fe(II) SCO materials to enable determination of the correlations between structural features and magnetic properties.
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•Broad overview on eight major methods for spin generation is given with their physical principles.•Corresponding device applications are discussed based on their recent ...development.•Future perspectives on the spintronic devices are provided at the end of this review.
Spintronics is one of the emerging fields for the next-generation nanoelectronic devices to reduce their power consumption and to increase their memory and processing capabilities. Such devices utilise the spin degree of freedom of electrons and/or holes, which can also interact with their orbital moments. In these devices, the spin polarisation is controlled either by magnetic layers used as spin-polarisers or analysers or via spin–orbit coupling. Spin waves can also be used to carry spin current. In this review, the fundamental physics of these phenomena is described first with respect to the spin generation methods as detailed in Sections 2 ~ 9. The recent development in their device applications then follows in Sections 10 and 11. Future perspectives are provided at the end.
Chirality or handedness distinguishes an object from its mirror images, such as the spread thumb, index finger, and middle finger of the right and left hand. In mathematics, it is described by the ...outer product of three vectors that obey a right-hand vs. left-hand rule. The chirality of ground state magnetic textures defined by the vectors of magnetization, its gradient, and an electric field from broken inversion symmetry can be fixed by a strong relativistic spin–orbit interaction. This review focuses on the chirality observed in the excited states of the magnetic order, dielectrics, and conductors that hold transverse spins when they are evanescent. Even without any relativistic effect, the transverse spin of the evanescent waves is locked to the momentum and the surface normal of their propagation plane. This chirality thereby acts as a generalized spin–orbit interaction, which leads to the discovery of various chiral interactions between magnetic, phononic, electronic, photonic, and plasmonic excitations in spintronics that mediate the excitation of quasiparticles into a single direction, leading to phenomena such as chiral spin and phonon pumping, chiral spin Seebeck, spin skin, magnonic trap, magnon Doppler, chiral magnon damping, and spin diode effects. Intriguing analogies with electric counterparts in the nano-optics and plasmonics exist. After a brief review of the concepts of chirality that characterize the ground state chiral magnetic textures and chirally coupled magnets in spintronics, we turn to the chiral phenomena of excited states. We present a unified electrodynamic picture for dynamical chirality in spintronics in terms of generalized spin–orbit interaction and compare it with that in nano-optics and plasmonics. Based on the general theory, we subsequently review the theoretical progress and experimental evidence of chiral interaction, as well as the near-field transfer of the transverse spins, between various excitations in magnetic, photonic, electronic and phononic nanostructures at GHz time scales. We provide a perspective for future research before concluding this article.
Abstract
The electrical control of a spin qubit in a quantum dot (QD) relies on spin–orbit coupling (SOC), which could be either intrinsic to the underlying crystal lattice or heterostructure, or ...extrinsic via, for example, a micro-magnet. In experiments, micromagnets have been used as a synthetic SOC to enable strong coupling of a spin qubit in quantum dots with electric fields. Here we study theoretically the spin relaxation, pure dephasing, spin manipulation, and spin–photon coupling of an electron in a QD due to the synthetic SOC induced spin–orbit mixing. We find qualitative difference in the spin dynamics in the presence of a synthetic SOC compared with the case of the intrinsic SOC. Specifically, spin relaxation due to the synthetic SOC and deformation potential phonon emission (or Johnson noise) shows
B
0
5
(or
B
0
) dependence with the magnetic field, which is in contrast with the
B
0
7
(or
B
0
3
) dependence in the case of the intrinsic SOC. Moreover, charge noise induces fast spin dephasing to the first order of the synthetic SOC, which is in sharp contrast with the negligible spin pure dephasing in the case of the intrinsic SOC. These qualitative differences are attributed to the broken time-reversal symmetry (
T
-symmetry) of the synthetic SOC. An SOC with broken
T
-symmetry (such as the synthetic SOC from a micro-magnet) eliminates the ‘Van Vleck cancellation’ and causes a finite longitudinal spin–electric coupling that allows the longitudinal coupling between spin and electric field, and in turn allows spin pure dephasing. Finally, through proper choice of magnetic field orientation, the electric-dipole spin resonance via the synthetic SOC can be improved with potential applications in spin-based quantum computing.
An outstanding feature of topological quantum materials is their novel spin topology in the electronic band structures with an expected large charge‐to‐spin conversion efficiency. Here, a ...charge‐current‐induced spin polarization in the type‐II Weyl semimetal candidate WTe2 and efficient spin injection and detection in a graphene channel up to room temperature are reported. Contrary to the conventional spin Hall and Rashba–Edelstein effects, the measurements indicate an unconventional charge‐to‐spin conversion in WTe2, which is primarily forbidden by the crystal symmetry of the system. Such a large spin polarization can be possible in WTe2 due to a reduced crystal symmetry combined with its large spin Berry curvature, spin–orbit interaction with a novel spin‐texture of the Fermi states. A robust and practical method is demonstrated for electrical creation and detection of such a spin polarization using both charge‐to‐spin conversion and its inverse phenomenon and utilized it for efficient spin injection and detection in the graphene channel up to room temperature. These findings open opportunities for utilizing topological Weyl materials as nonmagnetic spin sources in all‐electrical van der Waals spintronic circuits and for low‐power and high‐performance nonvolatile spintronic technologies.
An outstanding feature of the topological Weyl semimetal WTe2 is its novel spin topologies in the electronic band structure. An unconventional charge–spin conversion in WTe2 due to its lower crystal symmetry combined with large Berry curvature and spin‐texture of the Fermi states is demonstrated. These findings have great potential for utilizing WTe2 for spintronic circuits and quantum technologies.
We demonstrate the interplay of pure spin current, spin-polarized current, and spin fluctuation in 3d NixCu1–x. By tuning the compositions of the NixCu1–x alloys, we separate the effects due to the ...pure spin current and spin-polarized current. By exploiting the interaction of spin current with spin fluctuation in suitable Ni-Cu alloys, we obtain an unprecedentedly high spin Hall angle of 46%, about 5 times larger than that in Pt, at room temperature. Furthermore, we show that spin-dependent thermal transport via anomalous Nernst effect can serve as a sensitive magnetometer to electrically probe the magnetic phase transitions in thin films with in-plane anisotropy. As a result, the enhancement of spin Hall angle by exploiting spin current fluctuation via composition control makes 3d magnets functional materials in charge-to-spin conversion for spintronic application.
This review article focuses on the understanding of intersystem crossing (ISC) in molecules. It addresses readers who are interested in the phenomenon of intercombination transitions between states ...of different electron spin multiplicities but are not familiar with relativistic quantum chemistry. Among the spin-dependent interaction terms that enable a crossover between states of different electron spin multiplicities, spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is by far the most important. If SOC is small or vanishes by symmetry, ISC can proceed by electronic spin-spin coupling (SSC) or hyperfine interaction (HFI). Although this review discusses SSC- and HFI-based ISC, the emphasis is on SOC-based ISC. In addition to laying the theoretical foundations for the understanding of ISC, the review elaborates on the qualitative rules for estimating transition probabilities. Research on the mechanisms of ISC has experienced a major revival in recent years owing to its importance in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Exemplified by challenging case studies, chemical substitution and solvent environment effects are discussed with the aim of helping the reader to understand and thereby get a handle on the factors that steer the efficiency of ISC.