World's first spin-pump-induced spin transport in p-type Si at room temperature
Under the leadership of Specially Appointed Associate Professor Eiji SHKOH , 2nd year student in the first-term of a doctoral program, KUBO Kazuki , and Professor Masashi SHIRAISHI at the Division of Advanced Electronics and Optical Science, Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, a group of researchers succeeded in spin transport in p-type silicon at room temperature by using spin-pumping. This achievement was realized in cooperation with Professor Eiji SAITOH and Assistant Professor Kazuya ANDO at the Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University.
Although charge current has been used for information transport in electronics, there have been problems in miniaturization and energy loss due to heat generation. Therefore, new information processing devices based on new concepts are expected. Spintronics is a strong candidate for such technologies and currently silicon spintronics is drawing attention.
Generating pure spin current in n-type silicon and spin transport at room temperature was achieved in 2009 by a group of researchers at TDK Corporation, Akita Industrial Technology Center, and at Shiraishi Lab in the Division of Advanced Electronics and Optical Science and at the Suzuki Lab in the Division of Materials Physics at Osaka University. However, as spin transport in n-type silicon necessary for creating logical circuits has not been achieved, its achievement has been strongly desired.
The success of this group has brought about the establishment of spin transport at room temperature in both n-type and p-type silicon, an achievement which will lead to the possible development of ultra-low energy logical devices by generating pure spin current.
Abstract
Currently, the establishment of novel beyond-CMOS technologies is eagerly awaited
because of the difficulty in fabricating devices of several tens of nanometers in size and the large
amount of heat emission from nano-devices. Spintronics using semiconductors is thought to
be a potential technology to solve the above-mentioned problem. When we establish a spin-
based beyond-CMOS technology using Si, tremendous advantages can be obtained because
fully-constructed infrastructures of Si electronics can be utilized easily and Si is known as
a ubiquitous and less toxic material. Whereas spin transport at room temperature (RT) in n-
type Si has been reported previously, spin transport in p-type Si has not been experimentally
realized, which is an important and unexplored milestone in spintronics. Successful
observations of spin transport in n- and p-type Si are significant for constructing future spin-
based logic systems, such as for the charge transport in Si for operating conventional logic
circuits. Here we achieved in demonstrating spin-pumping-induced spin transport in p-type Si at
RT.
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To learn more about this research, please read the full research report entitled "Spin-pump-induced spin transport in p-type Si at room temperature" at this page of the Physical Review Letters website.
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