Spin Polarized Transport in Core Shell Nanowire of Silicon and Germanium

TL;DR

This study uses semi-classical Monte Carlo simulations to analyze spin polarized electron transport in ultra-thin silicon-germanium core-shell nanowires, revealing how core size, electric field, and temperature affect spin dephasing length.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how core diameter, electric field, and temperature influence spin dephasing in silicon-germanium nanowires, which is crucial for spintronic device design.

Findings

Spin dephasing length increases with Si-core diameter in Si-Core/Ge-Shell nanowires.

Spin dephasing length decreases with Ge-core diameter in Ge-Core/Si-Shell nanowires.

Spin dephasing length is weakly dependent on applied transverse electric field.

Abstract

We investigate spin polarized electron transport in ultra-thin Si-Core/Ge-Shell and Ge-Core/Si-Shell nanowire system using semi-classical Monte Carlo simulation method. Depolarization of electron's spin occurs in nanowire mainly due to D'yakonov-Perel dephasing (DP-mechanism) and Elliott-Yafet dephasing (EY-mechanism). We studied the dependence of spin dephasing on ultra-thin silicon core diameter in Si-Core/Ge-Shell nanowire and germanium core diameter in Ge-Core/Si-Shell nanowire. Variation in spin dephasing length with varying core diameter ranging from 1 nm to 9 nm indicate that spin dephasing length increases with increase in Si-core diameter in Si-Core/Ge-Shell nanowire and spin dephasing length decreases with increase in Ge-core diameter in Ge-Core/Si-Shell nanowire. We then studied the variation in spin dephasing length with varying externally applied transverse electric field ranging from 20 kV/cm to100 kV/cm. In the electric field dependence study we found that spin dephasing length is weakly dependent upon applied electric field. In the end, we studied the variation in spin dephasing length with varying temperature in the range of 4 K to 377 K. In this simulational study we found that for both Si-Core/Ge-Shell and Ge-Core/Si-Shell nanowire system spin dephasing length shows a strong dependence on temperature and spin dephasing length increases with decrease in temperature from room temperature range.