Ferroelectric gate control of Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling in ferromagnetic semiconductor (Zn, Co)O

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate the ferroelectric gate control of Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (R-D SOC) in a hybrid heterostructure consisting of a ferromagnetic semiconductor channel (Zn, Co)O(0001) and a ferroelectric substrate PMN-PT(111). The R-D SOC causes a transverse spin current via the charge-spin conversion, which results in unbalanced transverse spin and charge accumulations due to the spin-polarized band in the ferromagnetic (Zn, Co)O channel. By the reversal of gated ferroelectric polarization, we observed 55% modulation of the R-D SOC correlated Hall resistivity to the magnetization correlated anomalous Hall resistivity and 70% modulation of the low-field magnetoresistance at 50 K. Our experimental results pave a way toward semiconductor-based spintronic-integrated circuits with an ultralow power consumption in ferromagnetic semiconductors.