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    Spin Nernst effect in a p-band semimetal InBi
    (Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2020) Zhang, Yang; Xu, Qiunan; Koepernik, Klaus; Fu, Chenguang; Gooth, Johannes; van den Brink, Jeroen; Felser, Claudia; Sun, Yan
    Since spin currents can be generated, detected, and manipulated via the spin Hall effect (SHE), the design of strong SHE materials has become a focus in the field of spintronics. Because of the recent experimental progress also the spin Nernst effect (SNE), the thermoelectrical counterpart of the SHE, has attracted much interest. Empirically strong SHEs and SNEs are associated with d-band compounds, such as transition metals and their alloys—the largest spin Hall conductivity (SHC) in a p-band material is $\sim 450\left(\hslash /e\right){\left({\Omega}\enspace \mathrm{c}\mathrm{m}\right)}^{-1}$ for a Bi–Sb alloy, which is only about a fifth of platinum. This raises the question whether either the SHE and SNE are naturally suppressed in p-bands compounds, or favourable p-band systems were just not identified yet. Here we consider the p-band semimetal InBi, and predict it has a record SHC ${\sigma }_{xy}^{z}\approx 1100\enspace \left(\hslash /e\right){\left({\Omega}\enspace \mathrm{c}\mathrm{m}\right)}^{-1}$ which is due to the presence of nodal lines in its band structure. Also the spin-Nernst conductivity ${\alpha }_{zx}^{y}\approx 1.2\enspace \left(\hslash /e\right)\left(A/m\cdot K\right)$ is very large, but our analysis shows its origin is different as the maximum appears in a different tensor element compared to that in SHC. This insight gained on InBi provides guiding principles to obtain a strong SHE and SNE in p-band materials and establishes a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the SHE and SNE.
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    Different types of spin currents in the comprehensive materials database of nonmagnetic spin Hall effect
    (London : Nature Publ. Group, 2021) Zhang, Yang; Xu, Qiunan; Koepernik, Klaus; Rezaev, Roman; Janson, Oleg; Železný, Jakub; Jungwirth, Tomáš; Felser, Claudia; van den Brink, Jeroen; Sun, Yan
    Spin Hall effect (SHE) has its special position in spintronics. To gain new insight into SHE and to identify materials with substantial spin Hall conductivity (SHC), we performed high-precision high-throughput ab initio calculations of the intrinsic SHC for over 20,000 nonmagnetic crystals. The calculations revealed a strong relationship between the magnitude of the SHC and the crystalline symmetry, where a large SHC is typically associated with mirror symmetry-protected nodal line band structures. This database includes 11 materials with an SHC comparable to or even larger than that of Pt. Materials with different types of spin currents were additionally identified. Furthermore, we found that different types of spin current can be obtained by rotating applied electrical fields. This improves our understanding and is expected to facilitate the design of new types of spin-orbitronic devices.