Suppression of spin-orbit scattering in strongly disordered gold nanojunctions.

We discovered that spin-orbit scattering in strongly disordered gold nanojunctions is strongly suppressed relative to that in weakly disordered gold thin films. This property is unusual because in weakly disordered films spin-orbit scattering increases with disorder. Granularity and freezing of spin-orbit scattering inside the grains explains the suppression of spin-orbit scattering. We propose a generalized Elliot-Yafet relation that applies to a strongly disordered granular regime.