Observation of extremely long electron-spin-relaxation times in p-type delta -doped GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs double heterostructures

Optical and Magneto-Optical Properties of Donor-Bound Excitons in Vacancy-Engineered Colloidal Nanocrystals

Controlled insertion of electronic states within the band gap of semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) is a powerful tool for tuning their physical properties. One compelling example is II-VI NCs incorporating heterovalent coinage metals in which hole capture produces acceptor-bound excitons. To date, the opposite donor-bound exciton scheme has not been realized because of the unavailability of suitable donor dopants. Here, we produce a model system for donor-bound excitons in CdSeS NCs engineered with sulfur vacancies (V_S) that introduce a donor state below the conduction band (CB), resulting in long-lived intragap luminescence. V_S-localized electrons are almost unaffected by trapping, and suppression of thermal quenching boosts the emission efficiency to 85%. Magneto-optical measurements indicate that the V_S are not magnetically coupled to the NC bands and that the polarization properties are determined by the spin of the valence-band photohole, whose spin flip is massively slowed down due to suppressed exchange interaction with the donor-localized electron.

Temperature and electron density dependence of spin relaxation in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well

Temperature and carrier density-dependent spin dynamics for GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells (QWs) with different structural symmetries have been studied by using time-resolved Kerr rotation technique. The spin relaxation time is measured to be much longer for the symmetrically designed GaAs QW comparing with the asymmetrical one, indicating the strong influence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling on spin relaxation. D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism has been revealed to be the dominant contribution for spin relaxation in GaAs/AlGaAs QWs. The spin relaxation time exhibits non-monotonic-dependent behavior on both temperature and photo-excited carrier density, revealing the important role of non-monotonic temperature and density dependence of electron-electron Coulomb scattering. Our experimental observations demonstrate good agreement with recently developed spin relaxation theory based on microscopic kinetic spin Bloch equation approach.

Compact cryogenic Kerr microscope for time-resolved studies of electron spin transport in microstructures

A compact cryogenic Kerr microscope for operation in the small volume of high-field magnets is described. It is suited for measurements both in Voigt and Faraday configurations. Coupled with a pulsed laser source, the microscope is used to measure the time-resolved Kerr rotation response of semiconductor microstructures with approximately 1 mum spatial resolution. The microscope was designed to study spin transport, a critical issue in the field of spintronics. It is thus possible to generate spin polarization at a given location on a microstructure and probe it at a different location. The operation of the microscope is demonstrated by time-resolved measurements of micrometer distance diffusion of spin polarized electrons in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction quantum well at 4.2 K and 7 T.

Spin diffusion in semiconductors

The behavior of spin diffusion in doped semiconductors is shown to be qualitatively different than in undoped (intrinsic) ones. Whereas a spin packet in an intrinsic semiconductor must be a multiple-band disturbance, involving inhomogeneous distributions of both electrons and holes, in a doped semiconductor a single-band disturbance is possible. For n-doped nonmagnetic semiconductors the enhancement of diffusion due to a degenerate electron sea in the conduction band is much larger for these single-band spin packets than for charge packets-this explains the anomalously large spin diffusion recently observed in n-doped GaAs at 1.6 K. In n-doped ferromagnetic and semimagnetic semiconductors the motion of spin packets polarized antiparallel to the equilibrium carrier spin polarization is predicted to be an order of magnitude faster than for parallel polarized spin packets. These results are reversed for p-doped semiconductors.