Emergent Rashba spin-orbit coupling in bulk gold with buried network of nanoscale interfaces.

ABSTRACT: The Rashba effect, which plays a crucial role in fundamental materials physics and potential spintronics applications, has been engineered in diverse systems, including semiconductor quantum wells, oxide heterostructures, metallic surfaces, topological insulators, ferroelectrics, etc. However, generating it in systems that preserve bulk inversion symmetry (BIS), for example, in bulk metals, has not been possible so far. We demonstrate a strategy to introduce and tune Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI) to unprecedented magnitudes in inversion-symmetric solids by incorporating ultrasmall silver nanoparticles in bulk gold. The near-identical lattice constants of Ag and Au allow dense packing of the Ag/Au hetero-interfaces without compromising the global BIS. By varying the density of embedde

SUBMITTER: Kumbhakar S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12513416 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature