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Synthetic Rashba spin–orbit system using a silicon metal-oxide semiconductor

Nature Materials volume 20, pages 1228–1232 (2021)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 28 July 2021

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Abstract

The spin–orbit interaction (SOI), mainly manifesting itself in heavy elements and compound materials, has been attracting much attention as a means of manipulating and/or converting a spin degree of freedom. Here, we show that a Si metal-oxide- semiconductor (MOS) heterostructure possesses Rashba-type SOI, although Si is a light element and has lattice inversion symmetry resulting in inherently negligible SOI in bulk form. When a strong gate electric field is applied to the Si MOS, we observe spin lifetime anisotropy of propagating spins in the Si through the formation of an emergent effective magnetic field due to the SOI. Furthermore, the Rashba parameter α in the system increases linearly up to 9.8 × 10−16 eV m for a gate electric field of 0.5 V nm−1; that is, it is gate tuneable and the spin splitting of 0.6 μeV is relatively large. Our finding establishes a family of spin–orbit systems.

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Fig. 1: Device structure and basic charge and spin transport characteristics in a synthetic Rashba system made of Si MOS.
Fig. 2: Gate modulation of spin precession signals and spin lifetime anisotropy.
Fig. 3: Gate voltage dependence of the spin lifetime anisotropy.
Fig. 4: Physics behind the spin lifetime anisotropy, the Rashba SOI and the emergent effective magnetic field in the Si MOS, and the gate-tuneable Rashba parameter.

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Source data for the main paper figures are provided with this paper. Additional data are available from the corresponding authors on request.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported in part by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Research Fellow Program (grant no. 18J22869), JST-PRESTO ‘Information Carrier’ Program and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) ‘Semiconductor Spincurrentronics’ (grant no. 16H06330).

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  1. Shinji Miwa

    Present address: Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Science and Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan

    Soobeom Lee, Naoto Yamashita, Ryo Ohshima, Ei Shigematsu, Yuichiro Ando & Masashi Shiraishi

  2. Advanced Products Development Center, TDK Corporation, Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan

    Hayato Koike

  3. Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan

    Minori Goto, Shinji Miwa & Yoshishige Suzuki

  4. PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Honcho, Kawaguchi, Saitama, Japan

    Yuichiro Ando

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Contributions

M.S. and S.L. conceived the experiments. H.K., M.G., S.M. and Y.S. fabricated samples. S.L. and N.Y. collected data. S.L., R.O., E.S., Y.A. and M.S. analysed the results. M.S. and S.L. wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results.

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Correspondence to Masashi Shiraishi.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Materials thanks Juan-Carlos Rojas-Sánchez and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–6, Refs. 1–5 and Discussion.

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Lee, S., Koike, H., Goto, M. et al. Synthetic Rashba spin–orbit system using a silicon metal-oxide semiconductor. Nat. Mater. 20, 1228–1232 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01026-y

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