Abstract
We demonstrate theoretically all-electric control of the superconducting transition temperature using a device comprised of a conventional superconductor, a ferromagnetic insulator, and semiconducting layers with intrinsic spin-orbit coupling. By using analytical calculations and numerical simulations, we show that the transition temperature of such a device can be controlled by electric gating which alters the ratio of Rashba to Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. The results offer a new pathway to control superconductivity in spintronic devices.
Highlights
We demonstrate theoretically all-electric control of the superconducting transition temperature using a device comprised of a conventional superconductor, a ferromagnetic insulator, and semiconducting layers with intrinsic spin-orbit coupling
There has been a surge of interest in the intersection of these fields, and new discoveries have enabled the new field of superconducting spintronics[10,11]
The insulating SiO2 layer should minimize possible modulations in the Curie temperature Tc of the ferromagnetic insulator (FI) driven by the applied gate voltage Vg, which can alone have an effect on the superconducting proximity effect, control samples without the FI layer should be fabricated to exclude this possibility
Summary
We demonstrate theoretically all-electric control of the superconducting transition temperature using a device comprised of a conventional superconductor, a ferromagnetic insulator, and semiconducting layers with intrinsic spin-orbit coupling. The generation of spin-polarized pairs which can penetrate deeper into adjacent ferromagnets opens an extra proximity “leakage channel” This contributes to the draining of superconductivity from the superconductor and further reduces Tc. much research has been dedicated to magnetic control of Tc, it would be beneficial to be able to electrically control Tc, as that would enable integration of superconducting nanostructures into electronic circuits without the requirement of applying magnetic fields, e.g. by changing the quasiparticle distribution[45,46]. It is known that the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling in a 2DEG can be tuned via a gate voltage[47,48,49,50]: this voltage can change the Rashba coefficient by a factor of 1.5–2.5 in thin-film structures based on GaAs or InAs47–49, and up to a factor of ~6 in nanowires[50] These results were obtained for different gate voltage ranges; e.g., ref. It should be possible to engineer a thin-film semiconductor with approximately matching Rashba and Dresselhaus couplings, and dynamically modulate the ratio between them by a factor of ~2 via a gate voltage
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