Spin filtering in a δ-doped magnetic-electric-barrier nanostructure

Shuai Li,Ya-Qing Jiang,Mao-Wang Lu,Sai-Yan Chen

doi:10.1063/1.4895386

Shuai Li, Ya-Qing Jiang + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4895386

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Journal: AIP Advances	Publication Date: Sep 1, 2014
Citations: 5	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Guilin University of Technology

Abstract

We report a theoretical study on spin-polarized transport in a δ-doped magnetic-electric-barrier nanostructure, which can be realized in experiments by depositing two ferromagnetic stripes on top and bottom of a semiconductor heterostructure under an applied voltage and by using atomic layer doping technique. The spin-polarized behavior of the electron in this device is found to be quite sensitive to the δ-doping. One can conveniently tune the degree of the electron spin polarization by adjusting the weight and/or position of the δ-doping. Thus, the involved nansosystem can be employed as a controllable spin filter, which may be helpful for exploiting new spin-polarized source for spintronics applications.

Highlights

The significant research area of spintronics[1] utilizes the spins of the electron instead of its charges to store and transfer the information, and exploits a new generation of spin-based electronic devices by combining existing semiconductor microelectronics technique
We report a theoretical study on spin-polarized transport in a δ-doped magneticelectric-barrier nanostructure, which can be realized in experiments by depositing two ferromagnetic stripes on top and bottom of a semiconductor heterostructure under an applied voltage and by using atomic layer doping technique
To substantially enhance spin injection into the semiconductor, recently, the magnetically modulated semiconductor nanostructure (MMSN) or the magnetic nanostructure[6] has aroused a lot of current research interest in generating spin-polarized current and fabricating spin filters this kind of nanostructures is the hybrid of nanosized ferromagnetic (FM) material and the semiconductor, which can be experimentally realized by confining the motion of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) embedded usually in the interface of a semiconductor heterostructure with an inhomogeneous magnetic field on the nanometer scale, e.g., depositing a nanosized FM stripe on the top of a semiconductor heterostructure can form a magnetic-barrier-shaped MMSN.[7]

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The significant research area of spintronics[1] utilizes the spins of the electron instead of its charges to store and transfer the information, and exploits a new generation of spin-based electronic devices by combining existing semiconductor microelectronics technique. Very recently, edified by this novel technique, an idea to structurally tailor electronic transport through a MMSN via the δ-doping was put forward by Lu et al.[20,21,22,23] Motivated by these works, in this paper, we explore spin-polarized transport in a new δ-doped MMSN and focus on the modulation of the spin filtering by the tunable δ-potential. Obtained results demonstrate that our considered δ-doped magnetic nanostructure can be employed a structurally-controllable spin filter for spintronics applications

MODEL AND METHOD

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSIONS