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Nanoscale spin rectifiers controlled by the Stark effect

Nature Nanotechnology volume 9, pages 997–1001 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

The control of orbitals and spin states of single electrons is a key ingredient for quantum information processing1,2,3,4,5 and novel detection schemes6,7,8 and is, more generally, of great relevance for spintronics9. Coulomb10 and spin blockade11 in double quantum dots12 enable advanced single-spin operations that would be available even for room-temperature applications with sufficiently small devices13. To date, however, spin operations in double quantum dots have typically been observed at sub-kelvin temperatures, a key reason being that it is very challenging to scale a double quantum dot system while retaining independent field-effect control of individual dots. Here, we show that the quantum-confined Stark effect allows two dots only 5 nm apart to be independently addressed without the requirement for aligned nanometre-sized local gating. We thus demonstrate a scalable method to fully control a double quantum dot device, regardless of its physical size. In the present implementation we present InAs/InP nanowire double quantum dots that display an experimentally detectable spin blockade up to 10 K. We also report and discuss an unexpected re-entrant spin blockade lifting as a function of the magnetic field intensity.

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Figure 1: Stark effect in a DQD.
Figure 2: Tuning spin blockade with the Stark effect.
Figure 3: Finite-bias breakdown of spin blockade.
Figure 4: Re-entrant magnetic lifting of the spin blockade.
Figure 5: Coupling oscillation in finite-size tunnelling.

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Acknowledgements

M.R. acknowledges funding from FP7 Marie Curie ITN INDEX and MIUR-PRIN2012 MEMO. F.R. acknowledges partial financial support of the MIUR through FIRB project RBFR13NEA4 ‘UltraNano’. The authors thank E. Molinari for her supportive work and E. Husanu for STEM imaging.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NEST, Scuola Normale Superiore and Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR, Piazza S. Silvestro 12, Pisa, I-56124, Italy

    Francesco Rossella, Daniele Ercolani, Lucia Sorba, Fabio Beltram & Stefano Roddaro

  2. S3, Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR, Via Campi 213a, Modena, I-41125, Italy

    Andrea Bertoni & Massimo Rontani

Authors
  1. Francesco Rossella
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  2. Andrea Bertoni
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  5. Lucia Sorba
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  6. Fabio Beltram
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  7. Stefano Roddaro
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Contributions

S.R. conceived and designed the experiment. D.E. and L.S. grew the nanowires and fabricated the devices. F.R. and D.E. performed the experiment. F.R., S.R., A.B. and M.R. analysed the data. All authors contributed to the writing and discussion of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Stefano Roddaro.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Rossella, F., Bertoni, A., Ercolani, D. et al. Nanoscale spin rectifiers controlled by the Stark effect. Nature Nanotech 9, 997–1001 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.251

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