Monte Carlo Simulations of Spin Transport in Nanoscale InGaAs Field Effect Transistors

B. Thorpe, K. Kalna, F.C. Langbein, S.G. Schirmer. Monte Carlo Simulations of Spin Transport in Nanoscale InGaAs Field Effect Transistors. J Applied Physics, 122, 223903, 2017. [DOI:10.1063/1.4994148] [arXiv:1610.04114] [PDF]

3D model of the studied In_{0.3}Ga_{0.7}As MOSFET showing spin polarization of electrons along n-channel with 4% strain in the [001] direction (Red) and unstrained (Purple).

Spin-based logic devices could operate at very high speed with very low energy consumption and hold significant promise for quantum information processing and metrology. Here, an in-house developed, experimentally verified, ensemble self-consistent Monte Carlo device simulator with a Bloch equation model using a spin-orbit interaction Hamiltonian accounting for Dresselhaus and Rashba couplings is developed and applied to a spin field effect transistor (spinFET) operating under externally applied voltages on a gate and a drain. In particular, we simulate electron spin transport in a \SI{25}{nm} gate length \chem{In_{0.7}Ga_{0.3}As} metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) with a CMOS compatible architecture. We observe non-uniform decay of the net magnetization between the source and gate and a magnetization recovery effect due to spin refocusing induced by a high electric field between the gate and drain. We demonstrate coherent control of the polarization vector of the drain current via the source-drain and gate voltages, and show that the magnetization of the drain current is strain-sensitive and can be increased twofold by strain induced into the channel.

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