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Updated: Jun 14, 2026

All-electronic Nanosecond-resolved Scanning Tunneling Microscopy: Facilitating the Investigation of Single Dopant Charge Dynamics
Published on: January 19, 2018
Theory of the spin relaxation of conduction electrons in silicon
1Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China.
Abstract:
A realistic pseudopotential model is introduced to investigate the phonon-induced spin relaxation of conduction electrons in bulk silicon. We find a surprisingly subtle interference of the Elliott and Yafet processes affecting the spin relaxation over a wide temperature range, suppressing the significance of the intravalley spin-flip scattering, previously considered dominant, above roughly 120 K. The calculated spin relaxation times T1 agree with the spin resonance and spin injection data, following a T(-3) temperature dependence. The valley anisotropy of T1 and the spin relaxation rates for hot electrons are predicted.
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