Significant efficiency increment of spintronic terahertz emitters by oxygen engineering

Spintronic terahertz (THz) emitters have been intensively explored as next-generation sources of THz waves due to their low-cost, nanometer thickness, and broadband spectra. Growing research works are focusing on how to improve the THz emission efficiency, mainly by using a larger spin-Hall angle heavy metal. Currently, the highest intensity spintronic THz emission was based on a CoFeB/Pt heterostructure. Here, we significantly improve the THz emission intensity of CoFeB/Pt by a factor up to 270% through simply incorporating oxygen atoms into the Pt layer. The oxidation of a Pt layer generates a large extrinsic spin Hall angle, which promotes the spin-to-charge conversion of PtOx. Furthermore, the oxygen incorporation also causes a finite oxidation of CoFeB near the interface. We revealed that the significantly enhanced THz emission of CoFeB/PtOx is contributed by both the bulk inverse spin Hall effect of PtOx and the interface effect. Finally, we demonstrated that the oxygen engineering procedure to improve the THz emission of spintronic THz emitters is a common phenomenon as verified in examples, including Co/PtOx, NiFe/PtOx, CoFeB/WOx, and CoFeB/TaOx heterostructures. These findings show that an oxidized heavy metal is a simple, low-cost, and effective route to enhance the spin-to-charge conversion and achieve intense THz pulses, which is promising especially for on-chip THz devices.