1212.1552 (M. Sakano et al.)

Strongly spin-orbit coupled two-dimensional electron gas emerging near
the surface of polar semiconductors    [PDF]

M. Sakano, M. S. Bahramy, A. Katayama, T. Shimojima, H. Murakawa, Y. Kaneko, W. Malaeb, S. Shin, K. Ono, H. Kumigashira, R. Arita, N. Nagaosa, H. Y. Hwang, Y. Tokura, K. Ishizaka

We investigate the two-dimensional (2D) highly spin-polarized electron accumulation layers commonly appearing near the surface of n-type polar semiconductors BiTeX (X = I, Br, and Cl) by angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Due to the polarity and the strong spin-orbit interaction built in the bulk atomic configurations, the quantized conduction-band subbands show giant Rashba-type spin-splitting. The characteristic 2D confinement effect is clearly observed also in the valence-bands down to the binding energy of 4 eV. The X-dependent Rashba spin-orbit coupling is directly estimated from the observed spin-split subbands, which roughly scales with the inverse of the band-gap size in BiTeX.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.1552