Electron spin-phonon interaction symmetries and tunable spin relaxation in silicon and germanium

Abstract

Compared with direct-gap semiconductors, the valley degeneracy of silicon and germanium opens up new channels for spin relaxation that counteract the spin degeneracy of the inversion-symmetric system. Here the symmetries of the electron-phonon interaction for silicon and germanium are identified and the resulting spin lifetimes are calculated. Room-temperature spin lifetimes of electrons in silicon are found to be comparable to those in gallium arsenide, however, the spin lifetimes in silicon or germanium can be tuned by reducing the valley degeneracy through strain or quantum confinement. The tunable range is limited to slightly over an order of magnitude by intravalley processes.

7 pages, 3 figures, 13 tables

References in corpus (3)

• Electronic measurement and control of spin transport in Silicon
• Spin-Orbit Symmetries of Conduction Electrons in Silicon
• Spin injection in Silicon at zero magnetic field

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Optical spin injection and spin lifetime in Ge heterostructures
• An experimental demonstration of room-temperature spin transport in n-type Germanium epilayers
• Analysis of phonon-induced spin relaxation processes in silicon
• Intrinsic Spin Lifetime of Conduction Electrons in Germanium
• Donor-driven spin relaxation in multi-valley semiconductors
• Giant g factor tuning of long-lived electron spins in Ge
• Carrier and Spin Coherent Dynamics in Strained Germanium-Tin Semiconductor on Silicon
• Elliott-Yafet Spin-Phonon Relaxation Times from First Principles
• Photoinduced inverse spin Hall effect in Pt/Ge(001) at room temperature
• Spin-dependent optical properties in strained silicon and germanium
• Derivation of effective spin-orbit Hamiltonians and spin lifetimes, with application to SrTiO${}_3$ heterostructures
• Suppressing spin relaxation in silicon
• Spin relaxation via exchange with donor impurity-bound electrons
• Optical spin orientation and depolarization in Ge
• Spin-dependent inter- and intra-valley electron-phonon scattering in germanium
• Hot-electron effect in spin relaxation of electrically injected electrons in intrinsic Germanium
• Impurity-driven intervalley spin-flip scattering-induced 2D spin relaxation in silicon
• Optical spin pumping in silicon