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Discovery of topological Weyl semimetals has revealed the opportunities to realize several extraordinary physical phenomena in condensed matter physics. Specifically, these semimetals with strong spin-orbit coupling, broken inversion symmetry and novel spin texture are predicted to exhibit a large spin Hall effect that can efficiently convert the charge current to a spin current. Here we report the direct experimental observation of a large spin Hall and inverse spin Hall effects in Weyl semimetal WTe2 at room temperature obeying Onsager reciprocity relation. We demonstrate the detection of the pure spin current generated by spin Hall phenomenon in WTe2 by making van der Waals heterostructures with graphene, taking advantage of its long spin coherence length and spin transmission at the heterostructure interface. These experimental findings well supported by ab initio calculations show a large charge-spin conversion efficiency in WTe2; which can pave the way for utilization of spin-orbit induced phenomena in spintronic memory and logic circuit architectures. Figure S1. Devices with WTe2-graphene heterostructure. (a) Optical micrograph of Device 1, with WTe2graphene heterostructure and ferromagnetic (TiO2 1 nm/Co 60 nm) contacts on graphene for detection and creation of (I)SHE in WTe2. The scale bar is 2 μm. (b) Atomic force microscope (AFM) picture of the heterostructure area (red mark in (a)). The inset is the thickness profile of WTe2 on few-layer graphene along the white dash line showing the WTe2 thickness is 27nm in Device 1. (c) AFM picture and thickness profile of Dev 3 (after the device burnout) showing WTe2 thickness to be 11 nm on monolayer CVD graphene.

An outstanding feature of topological quantum materials is their novel spin topology in the electronic band structures with an expected large charge‐to‐spin conversion efficiency. Here, a charge‐current‐induced spin polarization in the type‐II Weyl semimetal candidate WTe2 and efficient spin injection and detection in a graphene channel up to room temperature are reported. Contrary to the conventional spin Hall and Rashba–Edelstein effects, the measurements indicate an unconventional charge‐to‐spin conversion in WTe2, which is primarily forbidden by the crystal symmetry of the system. Such a large spin polarization can be possible in WTe2 due to a reduced crystal symmetry combined with its large spin Berry curvature, spin–orbit interaction with a novel spin‐texture of the Fermi states. A robust and practical method is demonstrated for electrical creation and detection of such a spin polarization using both charge‐to‐spin conversion and its inverse phenomenon and utilized it for efficient spin injection and detection in the graphene channel up to room temperature. These findings open opportunities for utilizing topological Weyl materials as nonmagnetic spin sources in all‐electrical van der Waals spintronic circuits and for low‐power and high‐performance nonvolatile spintronic technologies.

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We report room temperature ferromagnetism in boron-doped ZnO both experimentally and theoretically. The single phase Zn 1-x B x O films deposited under high oxygen pressure by pulsed-laser deposition show ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature. The saturation magnetization increases monotonously from 0 to 1.5 emu/cm 3 with the increasing of B componentx from 0 to 6.8%. The first-principles calculations based on density functional theory demonstrate that the ferromagnetism in B-doped ZnO originates from the induced magnetic moments of oxygen atoms in the nearest neighbor sites to the B-Zn vacancy pair. The calculated total magnetic moment increasing tendency with B component is well consistent with experiments. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: yjiang@ustb.edu.cn 1 Dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) are promising candidates for spintronics devices due to their peculiar magnetic and semiconductor properties. In recent years, researchers have made great efforts to design and fabricate DMS, especially those with Curie temperature (T C ) above room temperature. Among all DMS candidates, ZnO has attracted wide interest, since it is predicted to be an ideal room-temperature DMS by Dietl et al. [1]. The magnetic moments of oxygen atoms around Zn vacancy are confirmed to be an origin of the ferromagnetic (FM) property in pure ZnO system [ 2 , 3 ]. However, the density of Zn vacancy is sensitive to experimental conditions and difficult to be controlled. Transition metal (TM) doping is a traditional method to obtain room temperature ferromagnetism in ZnO system [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. However, the inconsistent experimental results raise a new problem of explaining the mechanism of ferromagnetism in TM-doped ZnO. Moreover, it is difficult to exclude the possibility that the ferromagnetism might be brought by a secondary phase of TM oxides or TM dopant clusters [13,14,15]. Consequently, many researchers turned their attention to non-TM doped ZnO and tried to provide undisputed intrinsic DMS. Pan et al. [16] theoretically predicted and experimentally realized room temperature ferromagnetism in carbon-doped ZnO films. A further work by Peng et al. [17] demonstrated the hole-induced mechanism in p-group element-doped FM ZnO system, which opens a new way for studying non-TM doped ZnO DMS.In this letter, we report our experimental study on 2p-group element B-doped ZnO system. First-principles calculations based on the density functional theory justify the intrinsic ferromagnetism in the system is induced by oxygen atoms in the nearest neighbor sites to the B-Zn vacancy pair, which is quite different from the origin of the ferromagnetism in carbon-doped ZnO.All the B-doped ZnO thin films were grown by pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) using a KrF 2 excimer laser operating at 300 mJ/pluse and 10 Hz. The targets were prepared by sintering mixed ZnO (99.99%) The most possible site for B should be tetrahedral or octahedral interstice in ZnO, due to the small radius of B. According to our calculation,...

We assess density functional theory studies of the effects of interfacial stoichiometry, Al activity, S segregation and Hf doping on the adhesion of the γ-Ni(Al)/α-Al2O3 interface. Computations of the Al activity in γ-Ni(Al) and of the interfacial phase diagram between 1300 and 1600 K suggest that the interface phase is Al-rich, but close to the boundary with the stoichiometric phase. We reveal that the Al-rich phase has significantly stronger adhesion than the stoichiometric phase and that S substantially decreases the adhesion of both. We demonstrate that doping with Hf yields a substantial improvement in adhesion, manifest in three ways: (i) It can pin S in bulk γ-Ni(Al), even up to 1600 K. (ii) It segregates and, once there, can strengthen the relatively weak stoichiometric interface (attaining a work of separation comparable to that for the strong Al-rich interface). (iii) It has the potential to displace S from interstitial interface sites.

A one-step method preparing of poly(vinylidene fluoride)-based electrospun membranes (PEMs) containing TiO 2 has been developed. The effect of TiO 2 on the morphology, degree of crystallization and electrochemical behavior of PEMs was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and electrochemical measurements. The PEMs containing TiO 2 show improved ionic conductivity and cycling performance compared with pure PEMs.