Strong spin Hall effect in the antiferromagnet PtMn

Effectively manipulating magnetism in ferromagnet (FM) thin-film nanostructures with an in-plane current has become feasible since the determination of a giant spin Hall effect (SHE) in certain heavy metal/FM systems. Recently, both theoretical and experimental reports indicate that metallic antiferromagnet materials can have both a large anomalous Hall effect and a strong SHE. Here we report a systematic study of the SHE in PtMn with several PtMn/FM systems. By using interface engineering to reduce the spin memory loss we obtain, in the best instance, a spin-torque efficiency xi(PtMn)(DL) equivalent to T-int theta(PtMn)(SH) similar or equal to 0.24, where T-int is the effective interface spin transparency. This is more than twice the previously reported spin-torque efficiency for PtMn. We also find that the apparent spin diffusion length in PtMn is surprisingly long, lambda(PtMn)(s) approximate to 2.3 nm.