Strain control of real-and lattice-spin currents in a silicene junction

TL;DR

This paper explores how strain can be used to control real- and lattice-spin currents in a silicene junction, revealing strain filtering effects and potential for spintronic applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates strain-controlled filtering of spin currents in silicene, with tunable pure real- or lattice-spin currents under various external fields, highlighting silicene's potential in nano-electro-mechanical and spintronic devices.

Findings

Strain filtering effect enables perfect control of spin currents.

Pure lattice-spin or real-spin currents are tunable by strain and external fields.

Multiple electron species can be controlled simultaneously by strain.

Abstract

We investigate real- and lattice-spin currents controlled by strain in a silicene-based junction, where chemical potential, perpendicular electric field and circularly polarized light are applied into the strained barrier. We find that the junction yields strain filtering effect with perfect strain control of real- (or lattice-) spin currents. (i) By applying electric field without circularly polarized light we show that total current is carried by pure lattice-spin up (or down) electrons tunable by strain. (ii) When circularly polarized light is irradiated onto silicene sheet without applying electric field, total current is carried by pure real-spin up (or down) electrons tunable by strain. High conductance peaks associated with pure real-(or lattice-) spin currents in case ii(or i) occur at specific magnitude of strain, yielding strain filtering effect. Magnitudes of filtered strain due to pure real- (or lattice-) spin currents may be tunable by varying chemical potential. Sensitivity may be enhanced by increasing thickness of strained barrier. Significantly, (iii) when both perpendicular electric field and circularly polarized light are applied, the total current is carried by three species of electron groups tunable by strain. This may lead to controllable numbers of electron species to transport. This result shows that strain filtering effect in a silicene-based junction is quite different from that in graphene junction. Our work reveals potential of silicene as a nano-electro-mechanical device and spin-valleytronic applications.