Electric Field and Strain Effects on Surface Roughness Induced Spin Relaxation in Silicon Field-Effect Transistors

The potential of reduction of power consumption and the growth of computational speed achieved by scaling of semiconductor devices is close to exhaustion. Utilizing spin properties of electrons might provide an opportunity for further improvement of the properties of microelectronic-based devices. Since silicon is the main material currently used in microelectronics, we investigate the properties of silicon films and surface layers with respect to their potential applications for spin-based devices. We calculate the electron subband splitting, the surface roughness-induced scattering, and the spin relaxation matrix elements in a silicon-on-insulator spin field-effect transistor for various parameters by applying the perturbative k·p approach and the linear combination of bulk bands method. Shear strain dramatically reduces the spin relaxation matrix elements promising a new opportunity to boost the spin lifetime in a silicon spin field-effect transistor. Spin relaxation in silicon, k·p method, spin-orbit interaction, empirical pseudopotentials, shear strain, surface roughness, spin MOSFET