Electrical injection and detection of spin accumulation in silicon at 500 K with magnetic metal/silicon dioxide contacts

Abstract

The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors has identified the electron's spin angular momentum as a new state variable that should be explored as an alternative to the electron's charge for use beyond the size scaling of Moore's Law. A major obstacle has been achieving control of the spin variable at temperatures required for practical applications. Here we demonstrate electrical injection, detection and precession of spin accumulation in silicon, the cornerstone material of device technology, at temperatures that easily exceed these requirements. We observe Hanle precession of electron spin accumulation in silicon for a wide range of bias, show that the magnitude of the Hanle signal agrees well with theory, and that the spin lifetime varies with silicon carrier density. These results confirm spin accumulation in the silicon transport channel to 500ĝ€‰K rather than trapping in localized interface states, and enable utilization of the spin variable in practical device applications. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.