Theory of Electron Spin Relaxation in ZnO

Abstract

Doped ZnO is a promising material for spintronics applications. For such applications, it is important to understand the spin dynamics and particularly the spin coherence of this II-VI semiconductor. The spin lifetime ${\tau }_s$ has been measured by optical orientation experiments, and it shows a surprising non-monotonic behavior with temperature. We explain this behavior by invoking spin exchange between localized and extended states. Interestingly, the effects of spin-orbit coupling are by no means negligible, in spite of the relatively small valence band splitting. This is due to the wurtzite crystal structure of ZnO. Detailed analysis allows us to characterize the impurity binding energies and densities, showing that optical orientation experiments can be used as a characterization tool for semiconductor samples.

7 pages, 1 figure: minor changes Accepted by Phys. Rev. B

References in corpus (8)

• Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications
• Spin relaxation of conduction electrons in bulk III-V semiconductors
• Room temperature spin coherence in ZnO
• Spin orbit coupling in bulk ZnO and GaN
• Demonstration of Rashba spin splitting in GaN-based heterostructures
• Symmetry of anisotropic exchange interactions in semiconductor nanostructures
• Spin relaxation and antisymmetric exchange in n-doped III-V semiconductor
• Theory of Optical Orientation in n-Type Semiconductors

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Spin dynamics in semiconductors
• Electron spin relaxation in bulk III-V semiconductors from a fully microscopic kinetic spin Bloch equation approach
• Zinc Oxide - From Dilute Magnetic Doping to Spin Transport
• Spin transport and spin dephasing in zinc oxide
• Spin noise spectroscopy of donor bound electrons in ZnO
• Theory of Electron Spin Relaxation in n-Doped Quantum Wells
• Prediction of extremely long electron spin lifetimes at room temperature in wurtzite semiconductor quantum wells
• Quantum-interference transport through surface layers of indium-doped ZnO nanowires
• Temperature dependence of the spin relaxation in highly degenerate ZnO thin films
• Spin relaxation in $n$-type ZnO quantum wells
• Spin-relaxation time in the impurity band of wurtzite semiconductors
• Signature of Hanle Precession in Trilayer MoS2: Theory and Experiment
• Long-lived electron spin coherence in Ga-doped crystals at room temperature
• Spin transport in polarization induced two dimensional confinement of carriers in wedge shaped \textit{c}-GaN nanowalls