Spin relaxation in spin light-emitting diodes: effects of magnetic field and temperature

We report experimental results on the electron spin relaxation length during vertical transport in spin lightemitting diodes (LEDs). Our devices are GaAs based LEDs with InAs quantum dots in the active region, an MgO tunnel barrier and an Fe/Tb multilayer spin injector with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, i.e. remanent out-of-plane magnetization, enabling efficient electrical spin injection in magnetic remanence. Additionally, our devices can be operated at room temperature. A series of samples with different injection path lengths allows us to experimentally determine the spin relaxation length in our devices. In combination with operation in magnetic remanence, we are able to determine the spin relaxation length without the influence of external magnetic fields and at room temperature and find it to be 27 nm. Applying an additional external magnetic field, we find that at a field strength of 2 T, this relaxation length almost doubles, which is in good agreement with spin relaxation times in GaAs. Temperature control of our samples allows us to measure the temperature dependence of the spin relaxation length. At 200 K, the spin relaxation length doubles to 50 nm and reaches 80 nm at 30 K, in good agreement with theoretic calculations. Our results show that polarization values obtained with spin-LEDs inside strong magnetic fields and at low temperatures are not comparable to those in remanence and at room temperature. However, the transfer of efficient spintronic devices to such applicationenabling settings is absolutely necessary and will be a major challenge considering the enormous differences in spin relaxation.