Spin relaxation induced by interfacial effects in n-GaN/MgO/Co spin injectors

Spin relaxation, affected by interfacial effects, is a critical process for electrical spin injection and transport in semiconductor-based spintronics. In this work, the electrical spin injection into n-GaN via n-GaN/MgO/Co tunnel barrier was realized, and the interface-related spin relaxation was investigated by both electrical Hanle effect measurement and time-resolved Kerr rotation (TRKR) spectrum. It was found that the spin relaxation caused by interfacial random magnetostatic field was nearly equal to the intrinsic contributions at low temperature (less than 80 K) and could be suppressed by smoother n-GaN/Co interface. When the interfacial random magnetostatic field was suppressed, the spin relaxation time extracted from the electrical injection process was still shorter than that in bulk conduction band, which was attributed to Rashba spin–orbit coupling (SOC) induced by the interface band bending in the depletion region. Due to thermal activation, luckily, the spin relaxation induced by the interfacial Rashba SOC was suppressed at temperatures higher than 50 K. These results illustrate that (1) spin relaxation time could be as long as 300 ps for GaN and (2) the influences of interfacial effects could be engineered to further prolong spin relaxation time, both of which shed lights on GaN-based spintronic devices with direct and wide bandgap.