Relaxation mechanism for electron spin in the impurity band of n-doped semiconductors

Pablo I. Tamborenea, Dietmar Weinmann, and Rodolfo A. Jalabert
Phys. Rev. B 76, 085209 – Published 27 August 2007

Abstract

We propose a mechanism to describe spin relaxation in n-doped III-V semiconductors close to the Mott metal-insulator transition. Taking into account the spin-orbit interaction induced spin admixture in the hydrogenic donor states, we build a tight-binding model for the spin-dependent impurity band. Since the hopping amplitudes with spin flip are considerably smaller than the spin-conserving counterparts, the resulting spin lifetime is very large. We estimate the spin lifetime from the diffusive accumulation of spin rotations associated with the electron hopping. Our result is larger but of the same order of magnitude than the experimental value. Therefore, the proposed mechanism has to be included when describing spin relaxation in the impurity band.

  • Received 15 January 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.76.085209

©2007 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Pablo I. Tamborenea1,2, Dietmar Weinmann2, and Rodolfo A. Jalabert2

  • 1Departamento de Física, FCEN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Pabellón I, C1428EHA Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • 2Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg, UMR 7504 (CNRS-ULP), 23 Rue du Loess, BP 43, 67034 Strasbourg Cedex 2, France

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Issue

Vol. 76, Iss. 8 — 15 August 2007

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