Suppression of the spin pumping in Pd/Ni81Fe19 bilayers with nano-oxide layer

We demonstrate that the spin pumping effect can be effectively suppressed with a nano-oxide layer. Spin pumping effect manifests itself by an enhancement of the Gilbert damping parameter in normal metal/ferromagnetic hetero-structures, while many spintronics devices prefer smaller damping parameter. Since the spin pumping effect is directly related with the spin dependent interface conductance, we can modify the spin pumping by altering the interface conductance with the nano-oxide layer. We prepared series of Pd/Ni81Fe19 bilayers with different pausing time between Pd and Ni81Fe19 depositions in order to control the interface conductance. The Gilbert damping parameters are determined from the line-width measurements in the ferromagnetic resonance spectra for each pausing time sample. They are 0.0490, 0.0296, 0.0278, and 0.0251 for 0, 6, 30, and 60 s pausing time, respectively. We find that the damping parameter of Pd/Ni81Fe19 is almost recovered to one of the Cu/Ni81Fe19 bilayer with 60 s pausing time, while the static magnetic properties are not noticeably changed. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3626593]