Tunable inverse spin Hall effect in nanometer-thick platinum films by ionic gating

Electric gating can strongly modulate a wide variety of physical properties in semiconductors and insulators, such as significant changes of conductivity in silicon, appearance of superconductivity in SrTiO(3), the paramagnet–ferromagnet transition in (In,Mn)As, and so on. The key to such modulation is charge accumulation in solids. Thus, it has been believed that such modulation is out of reach for conventional metals where the number of carriers is too large. However, success in tuning the Curie temperature of ultrathin cobalt gave hope of finally achieving such a degree of control even in metallic materials. Here, we show reversible modulation of up to two orders of magnitude of the inverse spin Hall effect—a phenomenon that governs interconversion between spin and charge currents—in ultrathin platinum. Spin-to-charge conversion enables the generation and use of electric and spin currents in the same device, which is crucial for the future of spintronics and electronics.