2008/08/31 by Nicholas J. Harmon, N. J. Harmon, W. O. Putikka +2
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Condensed matter physics #Doping #Electron #Ferromagnetism #Impurity #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Magnetic semiconductor #Materials science #Optoelectronics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Relaxation (psychology) #Semiconductor #Spin (aerodynamics) #Spin Hall effect #Spin polarization #Spinplasmonics #Spintronics #Wurtzite crystal structure #Zinc #ZnO doping and properties #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.79.115204
7 pages, 1 figure: minor changes Accepted by Phys. Rev. B
arxiv created 2009/02/18 · openalex publication_date 2009/03/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Doped ZnO is a promising material for spintronics applications. For such applications, it is important to understand the spin dynamics and particularly the spin relaxation times of this II-VI semiconductor. The spin relaxation time \ensuremathτs has been measured by optical orientation experiments, and it shows a surprising nonmonotonic behavior with temperature. We explain this behavior by invoking spin exchange between localized and extended states. Interestingly, the effects of spin-orbit coupling are by no means negligible, in spite of the relatively small valence-band splitting. This is due to the wurtzite crystal structure of ZnO. Detailed analysis allows us to characterize the impurity binding energies and densities, showing that optical orientation experiments can be used as a characterization tool for semiconductor samples.