A spin metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor using half-metallic-ferromagnet contacts for the source and drain

The current driven magnetization dynamics of a thin-film, three magnetic terminal device (spin-flip transistor) is investigated theoretically. We consider a magnetization configuration in which all magnetizations are in the device plane, with source-drain magnetizations chosen fixed and antiparallel, whereas the third contact magnetization is allowed to move in a weak anisotropy field that guarantees thermal stability of the equilibrium structure at room temperature. We analy...

The spin field effect transistor envisioned by Datta and Das opens a gateway to spin information processing. Although the coherent manipulation of electron spins in semiconductors is now possible, the realization of a functional spin field effect transistor for information processing has yet to be achieved, owing to several fundamental challenges such as the low spin-injection efficiency due to resistance mismatch, spin relaxation, and the spread of spin precession angles. Al...

We propose, theoretically, a new type of quantum field effect transistor that operates purely on the flow of spin current in the absence of charge current. This spin field effect transistor (SFET) is constructed without any magnetic material, but with the help of spin flip mechanism provided by a rotating external magnetic field of uniform strength. The SFET generates a constant instantaneous spin current that is sensitively controllable by a gate voltage as well as by the fr...

The concept of low-voltage depletion and accumulation of electron charge in semiconductors, utilized in field-effect transistors (FETs), is one of the cornerstones of current information processing technologies. Spintronics which is based on manipulating the collective state of electron spins in a ferromagnet provides complementary technologies for reading magnetic bits or for the solid-state memories. The integration of these two distinct areas of microelectronics in one phy...

An impressive success of spintronic applications has been typically realized in metal-based structures which utilize magnetoresistive effects for substantial improvements in the performance of computer hard drives and magnetic random access memories. Correspondingly, the theoretical understanding of spin-polarized transport is usually limited to a metallic regime in a linear response, which, while providing a good description for data storage and magnetic memory devices, is n...

An emerging paradigm in modern electronics is that of CMOS + $\sf X$ requiring the integration of standard CMOS technology with novel materials and technologies denoted by $\sf X$. In this context, a crucial challenge is to develop accurate circuit models for $\sf X$ that are compatible with standard models for CMOS-based circuits and systems. In this perspective we present physics-based, experimentally benchmarked modular circuit models that can be used to evaluate a class o...

A current problem in semiconductor spin-based electronics is the difficulty of experimentally expressing the effect of spin-polarized current in electrical circuit measurements. We present a theoretical solution with the principle of transference of the spin diffusion effects in the semiconductor channel of a system with three magnetic terminals. A notable result of technological consequences is the room temperature amplification of the magneto-resistive effect, integrable wi...

We propose a ``spin-guide'' source for generation of electric currents with a high degree of spin polarization, allowing long-distance transmission of the spin-polarization. In the spin-guide scheme proposed here, a non-magnetic conducting channel is wrapped by a magnetic shell which preferentially transmits electrons with a particular spin polarization. It is shown that this method is significantly more effective then the spin-filter-like scheme where the current flows perpe...

The silicon (Si) based spin-MOSFET (metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor) is considered to be the building block of low-power-consumption electronics, utilizing spin-degrees of freedom in semiconductor devices. In this paper, we review the latest results on the spin transport in nanoscale Si-based spin-valve devices, which is important to realize the nanoscale spin-MOSFET. Our results demonstrate the importance of ballistic transport in obtaining high spin-depend...

We show that spin polarization of electrons in nonmagnetic semiconductors near specially tailored ferromagnet-semiconductor junctions can achieve 100%. This effect is realized even at moderate spin injection coefficients of the contact when these coefficients only weakly depend on the current. The effect of complete spin extraction occurs at relatively strong electric fields and arises from a reduction of spin penetration length due to the drift of electrons from a semiconduc...