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Spin accumulation in forward-biased MnAs/GaAs Schottky diodes
J Stephens1, J Berezovsky, J P McGuire
1Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|September 28, 2004
Abstract:
We describe a new means for all-electrical generation of spin polarization in semiconductors. In contrast with spin injection of electrons by tunneling through a reverse-biased Schottky barrier, we observe accumulation at the metal-semiconductor interface of forward-biased ferromagnetic Schottky diodes, which is consistent with a theory of spin-dependent reflection off the interface. Spatiotemporal Kerr microscopy is used to image the electron spin and the resulting dynamic nuclear polarization that arises from the nonequilibrium carrier polarization.