Investigation of spin-polarized transport in GaAs nanostructures

A spin field effect transistor (spin-FET) has been fabricated that employs nanomagnets as components of quantum point contact (QPC) structures to inject spin-polarized carriers into the high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) of a GaAs quantum well and to detect them. A centrally-placed non-magnetic Rashba gate controls both the density of electrons in the 2DEG and the electronic spin precession. Initial results are presented for comparable device structures modeled with an ensemble Monte Carlo (EMC) method. In the EMC the temporal and spatial evolution of the ensemble carrier spin polarization is governed by a spin density matrix formalism that incorporates the Dresselhaus and Rashba contributions to the D'yakanov-Perel spin-flip scattering mechanism, the predominant spin scattering mechanism in AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures from 77-300K.