Spin mediated enhanced negative magnetoresistance in Ni80Fe20 and p-silicon bilayer

In this work, we present an experimental study of spin mediated enhanced negative magnetoresistance in Ni80Fe20 (50 nm)/p-Si (350 nm) bilayer. The resistance measurement shows a reduction of ~2.5% for the bilayer specimen as compared to 1.3% for Ni80Fe20 (50 nm) on oxide specimen for an out-of-plane applied magnetic field of 3 T. In the Ni80Fe20-only film, the negative magnetoresistance behavior is attributed to anisotropic magnetoresistance. We propose that spin polarization due to spin-Hall effect is the underlying cause of the enhanced negative magnetoresistance observed in the bilayer. Silicon has weak spin orbit coupling so spin Hall magnetoresistance measurement is not feasible. We use V2ω and V3ω measurement as a function of magnetic field and angular rotation of magnetic field in direction normal to electric current to elucidate the spin-Hall effect. The angular rotation of magnetic field shows a sinusoidal behavior for both V2ω and V3ω, which is attributed to the spin phonon interactions resulting from the spin-Hall effect mediated spin polarization. We propose that the spin polarization leads to a decrease in hole-phonon scattering resulting in enhanced negative magnetoresistance.