Enhanced spin Hall ratio in two-dimensional semiconductors

The conversion efficiency from charge current to spin current via the spin Hall effect is evaluated by the spin Hall ratio (SHR). Through state-of-the-art ab initio calculations involving both charge conductivity and spin Hall conductivity, we report the SHRs of the III-V monolayer family, revealing an ultrahigh ratio of 0.58 in the hole-doped GaAs monolayer. In order to find more promising 2D materials, a descriptor for high SHR is proposed and applied to a high-throughput database, which provides the fully relativistic band structures and Wannier Hamiltonians of 216 exfoliable monolayer semiconductors and has been released to the community. Among potential candidates for high SHR, the MXene monolayer Sc₂CCl₂ is identified with the proposed descriptor and confirmed by computation, demonstrating the descriptor validity for high SHR materials discovery.