Giant photoinduced inverse spin Hall effect of the surface states in three dimensional topological insulators Bi₂Te₃ with different thickness

Abstract

The photoinduced inverse spin Hall effect (PISHE) has been studied in three dimensional (3D) topological insulator (TI) Bi2Te3 thin films with different thicknesses (3, 5, 12 and 20 quintuple layer (QL)). The sign of the PISHE current flips only once in the 3- and 20-QL Bi2Te3 films, but it flips three times in the 5-, 7- and 12-QL samples. The three-times sign flip is due to the superposition of the PISHE current of the top and bottom surface states in Bi2Te3 films. By analyzing the x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of the Bi2Te3 films, we find that the top surface of the 3- and 20-QL Bi2Te3 films are severely oxidized, leading to only one sign flip in the PISHE. The PISHE contributed by the top and bottom surface states in Bi2Te3 films have been successfully separated by fitting a theoretical model to the PISHE current. The impact of the bulk states on PISHE current has been determined. The PISHE current is also measured at different light powers, and all the measurement results are in good agreement with the theoretical model. In addition, it is found that the PISHE current in Bi2Te3 films grown on Si substrate is more than two orders larger than that grown on SrTiO3 substrates, which can be attributed to the larger absorption coefficient for Bi2Te3/Si samples. It is revealed that the PISHE current in 3D TI Bi2Te3 is as large as 140 nA/W in the 3-QL Bi2Te3 film grown on Si substrate, which is more than one order larger than that reported in GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction (about 2 nA/W) and GaN/AlGaN heterojunction (about 1.7 nA/W). The giant PISHE current demonstrates that the TIs with strong SOC may have good application prospects in spintronic devices with high spin-to-charge conversion efficiency.