Condensed Matter/Materials & Biological Physics Seminar with Jian Shi on Room-Temperature Switchable Rashba/Dresselhaus Effect in a Ferroelectric Quantum Well

Quantum well structures lacking inversion symmetry host a plethora of exciting physical phenomena. In this talk, we show the design, creation, and electron-spin-lattice interactions of quantum well polar materials for spintronics and energy transduction. First, we show the role of dimensionality on the phonon and polarization dynamics of free-standing two-dimensional membranes [1]. Then, we show the discovery of the persistent spin helix in a hybrid ferroelectric perovskite with a natural quantum well structure [2]. We demonstrate that the spin-polarized band structure is switchable at room temperature via an intrinsic ferroelectric field. The favored short spin helix wavelength (three orders of magnitude shorter than in III–V materials), room-temperature operation and non-volatility make the hybrid perovskite an ideal platform for understanding symmetry-tuned spin dynamics, towards designing spintronic or spin-orbit qubit materials and devices that can resolve the control-dephasing dilemma.

References: [1] Nature, 607, 480, 2022. [2] Nature Photonics 16, 529, 2022.