Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 66: Frontiers of Electronic Structure Theory: Focus on Topology and Transport

O 66.4: Poster

Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 18:15–20:30, Poster A

Electric switchable giant Rashba-type spin splitting in bulk PbS — •Bin Shao¹, Wenhui Duan², and Thomas Frauenheim¹ — ¹BCCMS, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany — ²Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Realizing electric controllable spin is one of the major challenges in the field of spintronics. A promising approach is to utilize so-called Rashba effect, which arises from the spin-orbit coupling under broken inversion symmetry, leading to a momentum-dependent spin splitting in k-space. However, the sizes of this splitting are usually rather small, which hinders the application of this effect in spintronics. In this work, based on density functional calculation, we predict a giant Rashba-type spin splitting in bulk PbS with space group P6₃mc. The phonon spectrum calculation gives evidence of the thermal stability of this system. The origin of the giant Rashba effect has been demonstrated from the deviation of the S ion from the inversion symmetric position, leading to an ferroelectric polarization along c axis. By switching the direction of the ferroelectric polarization, the spin directions of bulk carriers governed by the Rashba effect are completely rotated, which grants a potential approach to manipulate the spin of electrons by an external electric field. Moreover, under a reasonable hydrostatic pressure, the system could obtain the inversion symmetry due to the movement of the S ion backwards to symmetric positions. As a result, the system turns into a topological phase with the massless Dirac cone state at the (001) surface.