Semiconductor spintronics: Tuning the spin Hall effect in Si

A large spin Hall effect is calculated in doped silicon. The effect is determined using first principle calculations for the extrinsic spin Hall effect due to skew scattering at substitutional impurities. It is shown that the applied method accounts accurately for experimental results on B-doped Si. Here, the effect is weak but can be tuned significantly with heavy impurities. In the case of Si(Pt) and Si(Bi) a spin Hall angle is calculated comparable to those found in metals. Furthermore, the calculated spin relaxation times give physical insight to the different effect of electron and hole doping in Si. Experimentally, spin relaxation times for the electron-doped regime were found three orders of magnitude larger than for the hole-doped systems. Our calculations reproduce this finding which can be understood in terms of the electronic band structure of bulk Si. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.075206