Bias-controlled sensitivity of ferromagnet/semiconductor electrical spin detectors

Abstract

Using Fe/GaAs Schottky tunnel barriers as electrical spin detectors, we show that the magnitude and sign of their spin-detection sensitivities can be widely tuned with the voltage bias applied across the Fe/GaAs interface. Experiments and theory establish that this tunability derives not just simply from the bias dependence of the tunneling conductances $G_{\uparrow ,\downarrow }$ (a property of the interface), but also from the bias dependence of electric fields in the semiconductor which can dramatically enhance or suppress spin-detection sensitivities. Electrons in GaAs with fixed polarization can therefore be made to induce either positive or negative voltage changes at spin detectors, and some detector sensitivities can be enhanced over ten-fold compared to the usual case of zero-bias spin detection.

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Cited by in corpus (19)

• Comment: "Electrical injection and detection of spin accumulation in silicon at 500 K with magnetic metal / silicon dioxide contacts" [Nature Commun. 2:245 doi:10.1038/ncomms125 (2011)]
• Spin Modulation in Semiconductor Lasers
• Mapping between quantum dot and quantum well lasers: From conventional to spin lasers
• Spin-Lasers: Spintronics Beyond Magnetoresistance
• Spin injection and detection up to room temperature in Heusler~alloy/$n$-GaAs spin valves
• Electric-field control of spin accumulation signals in silicon at room temperature
• Gate-tunable large magnetoresistance in an all-semiconductor spin-transistor-like device
• Temperature evolution of spin accumulation detected electrically in a nondegenerated silicon channel
• The effect of spin drift on spin accumulation voltages in highly-doped Si
• Spin Drift in Highly Doped n-type Si
• Spin transport theory in ferromagnet/semiconductor systems with non-collinear magnetization configurations
• Giant enhancement of spin detection sensitivity in (Ga,Mn)As/GaAs Esaki diodes
• Effect of boundary vibration on the frictional behavior of a dense sheared granular layer
• Nonmonotonic bias dependence of local spin accumulation signals in ferromagnet/semiconductor lateral spin-valve devices
• Dynamic detection of electron spin accumulation in ferromagnet-semiconductor devices by ferromagnetic resonance
• Quantitative and systematic analysis of bias dependence of spin accumulation voltage in a non-degenerate Si spin valve
• Polarization response of spin-lasers under amplitude modulation
• Effect of the magnetic domain structure in the ferromagnetic contact on spin accumulation in silicon
• Charge and spin transport in a metal-semiconductor heterostructure with double Schottky barriers