Publication Date

2008

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Winkler, Roland

Degree Name

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Legacy Department

Department of Physics

LCSH

Electrons--Polarization

Abstract

Spintronics aims at using not only the electron's electric charge but also its quantum mechanical spin in order to develop novel device concepts beyond conventional charge-based electronics. Currently tremendous efforts are underway world-wide to achieve this goal and the theoretical research proposed here is part of it. In particular, the conditions are analyzed under which a device of nanometer size can deliver a beam of spin-oriented electrons using the spin-dependent reflection at a barrier. This work starts out from the fact that electrons can have two spin orientations, up and down. When the electrons in a tiny layer of a semiconductor like InSb hit a barrier, spin-up and spin-down electrons are reflected into different directions so that an appropriate set-up can select one or the other reflected beam. We study the conditions under which this set-up can be used to create a spin-polarized electron beam from a beam of initially unpolarized electrons. Inside the interference zone between the incoming and spin-flipped reflected beams parallel to the barrier, we get stripes of well-defined electron spin orientations.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references (pages [105]-107).

Extent

viii, 107 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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