Suspended nanowires as mechanically-controlled Rashba spin-splitters

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that suspended nanowires can act as mechanically-controlled spin-splitters via Rashba spin-orbit interaction, enabling tunable, charge-neutral spin currents with potential applications in spintronics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanically-controlled spin-splitting mechanism using suspended nanowires influenced by Rashba spin-orbit interaction, with tunability via mechanical bending and magnetic fields.

Findings

Suspended nanowires enable coherent spin state mixing and splitting.

Mechanical bending affects Rashba spin-orbit interaction sensitivity.

Nanowires can generate spin currents without charge transfer.

Abstract

Suspended nanowires are shown to provide mechanically-controlled coherent mixing/splitting of the spin states of transmitted electrons, caused by the Rashba spin-orbit interaction. The sensitivity of the latter to mechanical bending makes the wire a tunable nano-electro-mechanical (NEM) weak link between reservoirs. When the reservoirs are populated with misbalanced "spin up/down" electrons, the wire becomes a source of split spin currents, which are not associated with electric charge transfer and which do not depend on temperature or driving voltages. The mechanical vibrations of the bended wires allow for additional tunability of these splitters by applying a magnetic field and varying the temperature. Clean metallic carbon nanotubes of a few microns length are good candidates for generating spin conductance of the same order as the charge conductance (divided by $e^2$) which would have been induced by electric driving voltages.