dTheoretical investigation of spin-filtering in CrAs/GaAs heterostructures

被引:2
作者
Stickler, B. A. [1 ]
Ertler, C. [1 ]
Poetz, W. [1 ]
Chioncel, L. [2 ]
机构
[1] Karl Franzens Univ Graz, Inst Phys, Graz, Austria
[2] Univ Augsburg, Ctr Elect Correlat & Magnetism, Inst Phys, D-86135 Augsburg, Germany
关键词
SEMICONDUCTOR HETEROSTRUCTURES; FERROMAGNETIC SEMICONDUCTOR; EPITAXIAL-GROWTH; ZINCBLENDE CRAS; MODEL; TRANSPORT; BAND; DESIGN;
D O I
10.1063/1.4841075
中图分类号
O59 [应用物理学];
学科分类号
摘要
The electronic structure of bulk zinc-blende GaAs, zinc-blende and tetragonal CrAs, and CrAs/GaAs supercells, computed within linear muffin-tin orbital (LMTO) local spin-density functional theory, is used to extract the band alignment for the [1,0,0] GaAs/CrAs interface in dependence of the spin orientation. With the lateral lattice constant fixed to the experimental bulk GaAs value, a local energy minimum is found for a tetragonal CrAs unit cell with a longitudinal ([1,0,0]) lattice constant reduced by approximate to 2%. Due to the identified spin-dependent band alignment, half-metallicity of CrAs no longer is a key requirement for spin-filtering. Based on these findings, we study the spin-dependent tunneling current in [1,0,0] GaAs/CrAs/GaAs heterostructures within the non-equilibrium Green's function approach for an effective tight-binding Hamiltonian derived from the LMTO electronic structure. Results indicate that these heterostructures are promising candidates for efficient room-temperature all-semiconductor spin-filtering devices. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.
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页数:11
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