Measurements of spin–orbit interaction in epitaxially grown InAs nanosheets

Abstract

We report a low-temperature transport study of a single-gate, planar field-effect device made from a free-standing, wurtzite-crystalline InAs nanosheet. The nanosheet is grown via molecular beam epitaxy and the field-effect device is characterized by gate transfer characteristic measurements and by magnetic field orientation dependent transport measurements. The measurements show that the device exhibits excellent electrical properties and the electron transport in the nanosheet is of a two-dimensional nature. Low-field magnetoconductance measurements are performed for the device at different gate voltages and temperatures, and the characteristic transport lengths, such as phase coherent length, spin–orbit length, and mean free path, in the nanosheet are extracted. It is found that the spin–orbit length in the nanosheet is short, on the order of 150 nm, demonstrating the presence of strong spin–orbit interaction in the InAs nanosheet. Our results show that epitaxially grown, free-standing, InAs nanosheets can serve as an emerging semiconductor nanostructure platform for applications in spintronics, spin qubits, and planar topological quantum devices.