No Arabic abstract
We discuss the transport properties of a quantum spin-Hall insulator with sizable Rashba spin-orbit coupling in a disk geometry. The presence of topologically protected helical edge states allows for the control and manipulation of spin polarized currents: when ferromagnetic leads are coupled to the quantum spin-Hall device, the ballistic conductance is modulated by the Rashba strength. Therefore, by tuning the Rashba interaction via an all-electric gating, it is possible to control the spin polarization of injected electrons.
Spin transistors and spin Hall effects have been two separate leading directions of research in semiconductor spintronics which seeks new paradigms for information processing technologies. We have brought the two directions together to realize an all-semiconductor spin Hall effect transistor. Our scheme circumvents semiconductor-ferromagnet interface problems of the original Datta-Das spin transistor concept and demonstrates the utility of the spin Hall effects in microelectronics. The devices use diffusive transport and operate without electrical current, i.e., without Joule heating in the active part of the transistor. We demonstrate a spin AND logic function in a semiconductor channel with two gates. Our experimental study is complemented by numerical Monte Carlo simulations of spin-diffusion through the transistor channel.
We investigate the transport properties in a zigzag silicene nanoribbon in the presence of an external electric field. The staggered sublattice potential and two kinds of Rashba spin-orbit couplings can be induced by the external electric field due to the buckled structure of the silicene. A bulk gap is opened by the staggered potential and gapless edge states appear in the gap by tuning the two kinds of Rashba spin-orbit couplings properly. Furthermore, the gapless edge states are spin-filtered and are insensitive to the non-magnetic disorder. These results prove that the quantum spin Hall effect can be induced by an external electric field in silicene, which may have certain practical significance in applications for future spintronics device.
Fundamental physical properties limiting the performance of spin field effect transistors are compared to those of ordinary (charge-based) field effect transistors. Instead of raising and lowering a barrier to current flow these spin transistors use static spin-selective barriers and gate control of spin relaxation. The different origins of transistor action lead to distinct size dependences of the power dissipation in these transistors and permit sufficiently small spin-based transistors to surpass the performance of charge-based transistors at room temperature or above. This includes lower threshold voltages, smaller gate capacitances, reduced gate switching energies and smaller source-drain leakage currents.
We present an analytical device model for a graphene bilayer field-effect transistor (GBL-FET) with a graphene bilayer as a channel, and with back and top gates. The model accounts for the dependences of the electron and hole Fermi energies as well as energy gap in different sections of the channel on the bias back-gate and top-gate voltages. Using this model, we calculate the dc and ac source-drain currents and the transconductance of GBL-FETs with both ballistic and collision dominated electron transport as functions of structural parameters, the bias back-gate and top-gate voltages, and the signal frequency. It is shown that there are two threshold voltages, $V_{th,1}$ and $V_{th,2}$, so that the dc current versus the top-gate voltage relation markedly changes depending on whether the section of the channel beneath the top gate (gated section) is filled with electrons, depleted, or filled with holes. The electron scattering leads to a decrease in the dc and ac currents and transconductances, whereas it weakly affects the threshold frequency. As demonstrated, the transient recharging of the gated section by holes can pronouncedly influence the ac transconductance resulting in its nonmonotonic frequency dependence with a maximum at fairly high frequencies.
Landauers principle states that erasure of each bit of information in a system requires at least a unit of energy $k_B T ln 2$ to be dissipated. In return, the blank bit may possibly be utilized to extract usable work of the amount $k_B T ln 2$, in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics. While in principle any collection of spins can be utilized as information storage, work extraction by utilizing this resource in principle requires specialized engines that are capable of using this resource. In this work, we focus on heat and charge transport in a quantum spin Hall device in the presence of a spin bath. We show how a properly initialized nuclear spin subsystem can be used as a memory resource for a Maxwells Demon to harvest available heat energy from the reservoirs to induce charge current that can power an external electrical load. We also show how to initialize the nuclear spin subsystem using applied bias currents which necessarily dissipate energy, hence demonstrating Landauers principle. This provides an alternative method of energy storage in an all-electrical device. We finally propose a realistic setup to experimentally observe a Landauer erasure/work extraction cycle.