• Osintsev, Dmitri
• Stanojevic, Zlatan
• Baumgartner, Oskar
• Selberherr, Siegfried
• Sverdlov, Viktor

Abstract

Semiconductor spintronics is a rapidly developing field with large impact on microelectronics. Using spin may help to reduce power consumption and increase computational speed. Silicon is perfectly suited for spin-based applications. It is characterized by a weak spin-orbit interaction which should result in a long spin lifetime. However, recent experiments indicate the lifetime is greatly reduced in gated structures. Thus, understanding the peculiarities of the spin-orbit effects on the subband structure and details of the spin propagation in surface layers and thin silicon films is urgently needed. We investigate the contribution of the spin-orbit interaction to the equivalent valley splitting and calculate the spin relaxation matrix elements by using a perturbative k ⋅p approach. We demonstrate that applying uniaxial stress along the [110] direction may considerably suppress electron spin relaxation in silicon surface layers and thin films.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• experiment
• thin film
• semiconductor
• Silicon