Realization of spin transistor using spin Hall effect

Abstract

The discovery of the GMR effect made a huge impact on the storage industry, and also more importantly, triggered new electronics, so-called spintronics. Utilizing electron’s spin degree of freedom as well as making use of their charge states opens the possibility of developing devices that could be smaller, consume less power, and have multi-functionalities. Even though there have been many successes in metal-based spintronic devices such as HDD read heads, sensors and magnetic memories, the semiconductor spintronic device which has multi-functions containing magnetic storage and semiconductor properties has yet to be developed. In this talk, I will present the realization of spin transistor of which all three components are preformed within all-semiconductor structure. We fabricated two-dimensional photovoltaic devices where the spin-polarized carriers are generated by an optical illumination. The transport of the injected spins in the GaAs semiconductor channel was studied using spin Hall effect, in which we observed the precession of the spin-polarized electrons along the semiconductor channel up to tens of microns with a period of an order of micron. The precession of spin orientation is manipulated by an external electric field, which is a key element of the spin transistor. We also demonstrate a spin AND logic function using the spin transistor with two gates.