No Arabic abstract
We investigate charge conductance and spin and valley polarization along with the tunnelling magneto-resistance (TMR) in silicene junctions composed of normal silicene and ferromagnetic silicene. We show distinct features of the conductances for parallel and anti-parallel spin configurations and the TMR, as the ferromagnetic-normal-ferromagnetic (FNF) junction is tuned by an external electric field. We analyse the behavior of the charge conductance and valley and spin polarizations in terms of the independent conductances of the different spins at the two valleys and the band structure of ferromagnetic silicene and show how the conductances are affected by the vanishing of the propagating states at one or the other valley. In particular, unlike in graphene, the band structure at the two valleys are independently affected by the spin in the ferromagnetic regions and lead to non-zero, and in certain parameter regimes, pure valley and spin polarizations, which can be tuned by the external electric field. We also investigate the oscillatory behavior of the TMR with respect to the strength of the barrier potential (both spin-independent and spin-dependent barriers) in the normal silicene region and note that in some parameter regimes, the TMR can even go from positive to negative values, as a function of the external electric field.
Considering the difference of energy bands in graphene and silicene, we put forward a new model of the graphene-silicene-graphene (GSG) heterojunction. In the GSG, we study the valley polarization properties in a zigzag nanoribbon in the presence of an external electric field. We find the energy range associated with the bulk gap of silicene has a valley polarization more than 95%. Under the protection of the topological edge states of the silicene, the valley polarization remains even the small non-magnetic disorder is introduced. These results have certain practical significance in applications for future valley valve.
We adopt the tight-binding mode-matching method to study the strain effect on silicene heterojunctions. It is found that valley- and spin-dependent separation of electrons cannot be achieved by the electric field only. When a strain and an electric field are simultaneously applied to the central scattering region, not only are the electrons of valleys K and K separated into two distinct transmission lobes in opposite transverse directions, but the up-spin and down-spin electrons will also move in the two opposite transverse directions. Therefore, one can realize an effective modulation of valley- and spin-dependent transport by changing the amplitude and the stretch direction of the strain. The phenomenon of the strain-induced valley and spin deflection can be exploited for silicene-based valleytronics devices.
We study the heat conductance of hybrid superconducting junctions. Our analysis involves single-channel junctions with arbitrary transmission as well as diffusive connectors and shows the influence of the superconducting gaps and phases of the contacts on the heat conductance. If the junction is diffusive, these effects are completely quenched on average, however, we find that their influence persists in weak-localization corrections and conductance fluctuations. While these statistical properties strongly deviate from the well-known analogues for the charge conductance, we demonstrate that the heat conductance fluctuations maintain a close to universal behavior. We find a generalized Wiedemann-Franz law for Josephson junctions with equal gaps and vanishing phase difference.
A high reproducibility in the performance of cobalt/copper and permalloy/copper lateral spin valves with transparent contacts is obtained by optimizing the interface quality and the purity of copper. This allows us to study comprehensively the spin injection properties of both ferromagnetic materials, as well as the spin transport properties of copper, which are not affected by the used ferromagnetic material, leading to long spin diffusion lengths. Spin polarizations of permalloy and cobalt are obtained as a function of temperature. Analysis of the temperature dependence of both the spin polarization and conductivity of permalloy using the standard two-channel model for ferromagnetic metals suggests that a correction factor of ~2 is needed for the spin polarization values obtained by lateral spin valve experiments.
Several experimental techniques have been introduced in recent years in attempts to measure spin transfer torque in magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). The dependence of spin torque on bias is important for understanding fundamental spin physics in magnetic devices and for applications. However, previous techniques have provided only indirect measures of the torque and their results to date for the bias dependence are qualitatively and quantitatively inconsistent. Here we demonstrate that spin torque in MTJs can be measured directly by using time-domain techniques to detect resonant magnetic precession in response to an oscillating spin torque. The technique is accurate in the high-bias regime relevant for applications, and because it detects directly small-angle linear-response magnetic dynamics caused by spin torque it is relatively immune to artifacts affecting competing techniques. At high bias we find that the spin torque vector differs markedly from the simple lowest-order Taylor series approximations commonly assumed.