Electrical tuning of the spin-orbit interaction in nanowire by transparent ZnO gate grown by atomic layer deposition

Abstract

We develop an InAs nanowire gate-all-around field-effect transistor using a transparent conductive zinc oxide (ZnO) gate electrode, which is in situ atomic layer deposited after growth of a gate insulator of Al2O3. We perform magneto-transport measurements and find a crossover from the weak localization effect to the weak antilocalization effect with an increasing gate voltage, which demonstrates that the Rashba spin-orbit coupling is tuned by the gate electrode. The efficiency of the gate tuning of the spin-orbit interaction is higher than those obtained for a two-dimensional electron gas, and as high as that for a gate-all-around nanowire metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor that was previously reported. The spin-orbit interaction is discussed in line with not only a conventionally used one-dimensional model but also with a recently proposed model that considers effects of microscopic band structures of materials.