Skew Scattering Mechanism by an Ab Initio Approach: extrinsic spin ...

30 Trends in Magnetism
result, the strongest SHE (Table 1) are present in Au. This mechanism is similar to the strong spinflip
scattering at light impurities [13]. As it was discussed already in Ref. [14], the extremely large
α induced by the C impurities in the Au host leads to an alternative explanation of the gigantic SHE
measured in gold [17].
Summary
We have performed ab initio calculations of the extrinsic spin Hall effect caused by different
substitutional impurities in the Cu, Ag, and Au hosts. Depending on the chemical nature of the
impurity atom, the SHE can show opposite sign. A strong SHE is provided by the p scatterer-
impurity. They have to be either light, such as B, C, and N, in a heavy host like Au, or heavy, such
as Bi, in a light host like Cu. We have shown that the obtained results for the noble metals can be
explained by the consideration of the differences of the scattering phase shifts between the impurity
and host atoms.
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