Spin injection and detection in lanthanum- and niobium-doped SrTiO3 using the Hanle technique

Wei Han, Xin Jiang, Adam Kajdos, See-Hun Yang, Susanne Stemmer, Stuart S. P. Parkin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

48 Scopus citations

Abstract

There has been much interest in the injection and detection of spin-polarized carriers in semiconductors for the purposes of developing novel spintronic devices. Here we report the electrical injection and detection of spin-polarized carriers into Nb-doped strontium titanate single crystals and La-doped strontium titanate epitaxial thin films using MgO tunnel barriers and the three-terminal Hanle technique. Spin lifetimes of up to ∼100 ps are measured at room temperature and vary little as the temperature is decreased to low temperatures. However, the mobility of the strontium titanate has a strong temperature dependence. This behaviour and the carrier doping dependence of the spin lifetime suggest that the spin lifetime is limited by spin-dependent scattering at the MgO/strontium titanate interfaces, perhaps related to the formation of doping induced Ti 3+. Our results reveal a severe limitation of the three-terminal Hanle technique for measuring spin lifetimes within the interior of the subject material. © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalNature Communications
Volume4
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 8 2013
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01
Acknowledgements: We acknowledge partial support for this work from the MURI program of the Army Research Office (Grant no. W911-NF-09-1-0398) and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and thank Professor Aurelien Manchon, KAUST, for useful discussions.
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.

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