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Giant Spin Splitting through Surface Alloying

2007; American Physical Society; Volume: 98; Issue: 18 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.98.186807

1092-0145

Christian R. Ast, Jürgen Henk, A. Ernst, Luca Moreschini, M. Falub, D. Pacilè, P. Bruno, Klaus Kern, M. Grioni,

Magnetic properties of thin films

Surface alloying is shown to produce electronic states with a very large spin-splitting. We discuss the long range ordered bismuth/silver(111) surface alloy where an energy bands separation of up to one eV is achieved. Such strong spin-splitting enables angular resolved photoemission spectroscopy to directly observe the region close to the band edge, where the density of states shows quasi-one dimensional behavior. The associated singularity in the local density of states has been measured by low temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy. The implications of this new class of materials for potential spintronics applications as well as fundamental issues are discussed.