Spin and valley filter in strain engineered silicene

The realization of a perfect spin or valley filtering effect in two-dimensional graphene-like materials is one of the fundamental objectives in spintronics and valleytronics. For this purpose, we study spin- and valley-dependent transport in a silicene system with spatially alternative strains. It is found that due to the valley-opposite gauge field induced by the strain, the strained silicene with a superlattice structure exhibits an angle-resolved valley and spin filtering effect when the spin–orbit interaction is considered. When the interaction that breaks the time reversal symmetry is introduced, such as the spin or valley dependent staggered magnetization, the system is shown to be a perfect spin and valley half metal in which only one spin and valley species is allowed to transport. Our findings are helpful to design both spintronic and valleytronic devices based on silicene.