Spin scattering by dislocations in III-V semiconductors

A semiclassical treatment of spin relaxation in direct-gap compound semiconductors due to scattering by edge dislocations from both charged cores, and the strain fields surrounding them is presented. The results indicate a deleterious effect on spin transport in narrow bandgap III-V semiconductors due to dislocation scattering. However, this form of scattering is found to be surprisingly benign for wide-bandgap semiconductors with small spin-orbit coupling (such as GaN). This observation leads to a proposal for possible latticemismatched hybrid heterostructure devices that take advantage of the long spin lifetimes of the wide-bandgap semiconductors for transporting spin over large distances acting as spin-interconnects, and the wide tunability of spin in the narrow-bandgap semiconductors for spin logic operations.