Spin-dependent scattering in a silicon transistor

Abstract

The scattering of conduction electrons off neutral donors depends sensitively on the relative orientation of their spin states. We present a theory of spin-dependent scattering in the two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) of field effect transistors. Our theory shows that the scattering mechanism is dominated by virtual transitions to negatively ionized donor levels. This effect translates into a source-drain current that always gets reduced when donor spins are at resonance with a strong microwave field. We propose a model for donor impurities interacting with conduction electrons in a silicon transistor, and compare our explicit numerical calculations to electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR) experiments. Remarkably, we show that EDMR is optimal for donors placed into a sweet spot located at a narrow depth window quite far from the 2DEG interface. This allows significant optimization of spin signal intensity for the minimal number of donors placed into the sweet spot, enabling the development of single spin readout devices. Our theory reveals an interesting dependence on conduction electron spin polarization p_c. As p_c increases upon spin injection, the EDMR amplitude first increases as p_{c}^{2}, and then saturates when a polarization threshold p_T is reached. These results show that it is possible to use EDMR as an in-situ probe of carrier spin polarization in silicon and other materials with weak spin-orbit coupling.

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Silicon Quantum Electronics
• Spin dynamics in semiconductors
• Intrinsic Spin Lifetime of Conduction Electrons in Germanium
• $T_1$- and $T_2$-spin relaxation time limitations of phosphorous donor electrons near crystalline silicon to silicon dioxide interface defects
• Electrically detected magnetic resonance of neutral donors interacting with a two-dimensional electron gas
• Electrical detection of free induction decay and Hahn echoes in phosphorus doped silicon
• Donor hyperfine Stark shift and the role of central-cell corrections in tight-binding theory
• Device fabrication and transport measurements of FinFETs built with ${}^{28}$Si SOI wafers towards donor qubits in silicon
• Large-scale atomistic density functional theory calculations of phosphorus-doped silicon quantum bits
• Quantum read-out and fast initialization of nuclear spin qubits with electric currents
• Spin-dependent photovoltage in graphene/MoS2-based field-effect transistors
• Radio frequency readout of electrically detected magnetic resonance in phosphorus-doped silicon MOSFETs