Highly gate-tuneable Rashba spin-orbit interaction in a gate-all-around InAs nanowire metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor

Abstract

Abstract III-V semiconductors have been intensively studied with the goal of realizing metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) with high mobility, a high on-off ratio, and low power consumption as next-generation transistors designed to replace current Si technology. Of these semiconductors, a narrow band-gap semiconductor InAs has strong Rashba spin-orbit interaction, thus making it advantageous in terms of both high field-effect transistor (FET) performance and efficient spin control. Here we report a high-performance InAs nanowire MOSFET with a gate-all-around (GAA) structure, where we simultaneously control the spin precession using the Rashba interaction. Our FET has a high on-off ratio (104~106) and a high field-effect mobility (1200 cm2/Vs) and both values are comparable to those of previously reported nanowire FETs. Simultaneously, GAA geometry combined with high- κ dielectric enables the creation of a large and uniform coaxial electric field (>107 V/m), thereby achieving highly controllable Rashba coupling (1 × 10−11 eVm within a gate-voltage swing of 1 V), i.e. an operation voltage one order of magnitude smaller than those of back-gated nanowire MOSFETs. Our demonstration of high FET performance and spin controllability offers a new way of realizing low-power consumption nanoscale spin MOSFETs.