Spin-Dependent Tunneling of Holes in Heterostructures Based on GaMnAs Semiconductor: Effects of Temperature and Quantum Size

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated theoretically the spin-dependent transport of holes in heterostructures containing diluted magnetic semiconductor GaMnAs. Especially, we have addressed the transmission of holes through heterostructures based on single and double barriers within the mean field approximations. The diluted magnetic semiconductor acts as a barrier for spin-up holes and as a quantum well for spin-down ones. Our results show that the transmission depends on the temperature of the system and the number of the magnetic layers. For heterostructure with one magnetic layer, the spin-up transmission is suppressed for lower energies compared with the spin-down one. This suppressed transmission can be enhanced when we consider a heterostructure with additional magnetic layers. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the asymmetric heterostructure based on double magnetic layers presents a quite different transmission of holes compared with the symmetric one. These results can be useful to design and create spin filters based on magnetic and nonmagnetic semiconductors by tuning the temperature and the structural parameters.