Electrical tuning of the spin-orbit interaction in nanowire by transparent ZnO gate grown by atomic layer deposition

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a transparent ZnO gate electrode in an InAs nanowire FET can effectively tune the Rashba spin-orbit interaction, showing higher efficiency than 2D systems and aligning with advanced theoretical models.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel transparent ZnO gate electrode for nanowire FETs, enabling efficient electrical control of spin-orbit coupling with improved performance over existing methods.

Findings

Gate voltage induces a crossover from weak localization to antilocalization.

Spin-orbit coupling tuning efficiency surpasses 2D electron gas systems.

Results align with both 1D and microscopic band structure models.

Abstract

We develop an InAs nanowire gate-all-around field-effect transistor using a transparent conductive zinc oxide (ZnO) gate electrode, which is in-situ atomic layer deposited after growth of gate insulator of Al2O3. We perform magneto-transport measurements and find a crossover from weak localization to weak antilocalization effect with increasing gate voltage, which demonstrates that the Rashba spin-orbit coupling is tuned by the gate electrode. The efficiency of the gate tuning of the spin-orbit interaction is higher than those obtained for two-dimensional electron gas, and as high as that for a gate-all-around nanowire metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor that was previously reported. The spin-orbit interaction is discussed in line with not only conventionally used one-dimensional model but also recently proposed model that considers effects of microscopic band structures of materials.