Efficient control of pure spin currents in metallic nanostructures

Abstract

Pure spin current without accompanying the charge current is expected to deliver the spin angular momentum efficiently compared with a spin-polarized current with a charge current. However, owing to the extremely low generation efficiency of the pure spin current, the large total power consumption is a serious obstacle for practical applications. Here, the author introduces the progress of several research efforts developed by the author’s group for the efficient control of the pure spin current; a substantial improvement of the generation efficiency of pure spin current using a highly spin polarized ferromagnet, the generation of giant pure spin current using multi-terminal spin injection and novel device structures for efficient spin ejection.