Research

 Magnetic Materials group (Prof. Takanashi group) and Theory of Solid State Physics group (Prof. Maekawa group) have successfully observed a giant spin Hall effect in Au using the multi-terminal device consisting of the FePt perpendicular spin injector and the nano-sized Au Hall cross. The spin Hall effect has attracted much attention as a technique to convert charge current into spin current and vice versa without a ferromagnetic material. The present electrical signal of the spin Hall effect at room temperature is two order of magnitude larger than those reported previously, which opens up the new way for writing/reading the information in spin-electronics devices. This work was done in collaboration with Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University and AIST, and was published in Nature Materials (Advance Online Publication) on January 13th (London time). This work was also introduced in Nihon-Keizai Shimbun and Nikkan-Kogyo Shimbun (January 14th ).