No Arabic abstract
The behavior of spin diffusion in doped semiconductors is shown to be qualitatively different than in undoped (intrinsic) ones. Whereas a spin packet in an intrinsic semiconductor must be a multiple-band disturbance, involving inhomogeneous distributions of both electrons and holes, in a doped semiconductor a single-band disturbance is possible. For n-doped nonmagnetic semiconductors the enhancement of diffusion due to a degenerate electron sea in the conduction band is much larger for these single-band spin packets than for charge packets, and can exceed an order of magnitude at low temperatures even for equilibrium dopings as small as 10^16 cm^-3. In n-doped ferromagnetic and semimagnetic semiconductors the motion of spin packets polarized antiparallel to the equilibrium carrier spin polarization is predicted to be an order of magnitude faster than for parallel polarized spin packets. These results are reversed for p-doped semiconductors.
We derive a drift-diffusion equation for spin polarization in semiconductors by consistently taking into account electric-field effects and nondegenerate electron statistics. We identify a high-field diffusive regime which has no analogue in metals. In this regime there are two distinct spin diffusion lengths. Furthermore, spin injection from a ferromagnetic metal into a semiconductor is enhanced by several orders of magnitude and spins can be transported over distances much greater than the low-field spin diffusion length.
This review presents the recent progress in computational materials design, experimental realization, and control methods of spinodal nanodecomposition under three- and two-dimensional crystal-growth conditions in spintronic materials, such as magnetically doped semiconductors. The computational description of nanodecomposition, performed by combining first-principles calculations with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, is discussed together with extensive electron microscopy, synchrotron radiation, scanning probe, and ion beam methods that have been employed to visualize binodal and spinodal nanodecomposition (chemical phase separation) as well as nanoprecipitation (crystallographic phase separation) in a range of semiconductor compounds with a concentration of transition metal (TM) impurities beyond the solubility limit. The role of growth conditions, co-doping by shallow impurities, kinetic barriers, and surface reactions in controlling the aggregation of magnetic cations is highlighted. According to theoretical simulations and experimental results the TM-rich regions appear either in the form of nanodots (the {em dairiseki} phase) or nanocolumns (the {em konbu} phase) buried in the host semiconductor. Particular attention is paid to Mn-doped group III arsenides and antimonides, TM-doped group III nitrides, Mn- and Fe-doped Ge, and Cr-doped group II chalcogenides, in which ferromagnetic features persisting up to above room temperature correlate with the presence of nanodecomposition and account for the application-relevant magneto-optical and magnetotransport properties of these compounds. Finally, it is pointed out that spinodal nanodecomposition can be viewed as a new class of bottom-up approach to nanofabrication.
Exchange coupling between localized spins and band or topological states accounts for giant magnetotransport and magnetooptical effects as well as determines spin-spin interactions in magnetic insulators and semiconductors. However, even in archetypical dilute magnetic semiconductors such as Cd$_{1-x}$Mn$_x$Te and Hg$_{1-x}$Mn$_x$Te the evolution of this coupling with the wave vector is not understood. A series of experiments have demonstrated that exchange-induced splitting of magnetooptical spectra of Cd$_{1-x}$Mn$_x$Te and Zn$_{1-x}$Mn$_x$Te at the L points of the Brillouin zone is, in contradiction to the existing theories, more than one order of magnitude smaller compared to its value at the zone center and can show an unexpected sign of the effective Lande factors. The origin of these findings we elucidate quantitatively by combining: (i) relativistic first-principles density functional calculations; (ii) a tight-binding approach that takes carefully into account k-dependence of the potential and kinetic sp-d exchange interactions; (iii) a theory of magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) for $E_1$ and $E_1$ + $Delta_1$ optical transitions, developed here within the envelope function $kp$ formalism for the L point of the Brillouin zone in zinc-blende crystals. This combination of methods leads to the conclusion that the physics of MCD at the boundary of the Brillouin zone is strongly affected by the strength of two relativistic effects in particular compounds: (i) the mass-velocity term that controls the distance of the conduction band at the L point to the upper Hubbard band of Mn ions and, thus, a relative magnitude and sign of the exchange splittings in the conduction and valence bands; (ii) the spin-momentum locking by spin-orbit coupling that reduces exchange splitting depending on the orientation of particular L valleys with respect to the magnetization direction.
This article reviews the current status of spin dynamics in semiconductors which has achieved a lot of progress in the past years due to the fast growing field of semiconductor spintronics. The primary focus is the theoretical and experimental developments of spin relaxation and dephasing in both spin precession in time domain and spin diffusion and transport in spacial domain. A fully microscopic many-body investigation on spin dynamics based on the kinetic spin Bloch equation approach is reviewed comprehensively.
We consider the interaction between acceptor pairs in doped semiconductors in the limit of large inter-acceptor separation relevant for low doping densities. Modeling individual acceptors via the spherical model of Baldereschi and Lipari, we calculate matrix elements of the quadrupole tensor between the four degenerate ground states and show that the acceptor has a nonzero quadrupole moment. As a result, the dominant contribution to the large-separation acceptor-acceptor interaction comes from direct (charge-density) terms rather than exchange terms. The quadrupole is the leading nonzero moment, so the electric quadrupole-quadrupole interaction dominates for large separation. We calculate the matrix elements of the quadrupole-quadrupole interaction Hamiltonian in a product-state basis and diagonalize, obtaining a closed-form expression for the energies and degeneracies of the sixteen-state energy spectrum. All dependence on material parameters enters via an overall prefactor, resulting in surprisingly simple and universal results. This simplicity is due, in part, to a mathematical happenstance, the nontrivial vanishing of a particular Wigner 6-j symbol. Results are relevant to the control of two-qubit interactions in quantum computing implementations based on acceptor spins, as well as calculations of the thermodynamic properties of insulating p-type semiconductors.