A Spin Field Effect Transistor Based on a Strained Two-Dimensional Weyl Semimetal

Spin field effect transistors (SpinFET) are an iconic device in spintronics and typically function by employing a gate-induced electric field to tune the spin-orbit interaction in a semiconductor channel flanked by ferromagnetic source and drain contacts. We have proposed and analyzed a very different type of SpinEFT employing a channel made of a Weyl semimetal integrated with a piezoelectric layer where the gate voltage strains the channel and alters the energy dispersion relations. This modifies the interference between the two eigenspinors in the channel, leading to a modulation of the source to drain conductance The channel conductance shows oscillatory dependence on the channel length at zero gate voltage, which is a unique feature that can be harnessed to implement a complementary device like CMOS by connecting two SpinFETs with two different channel lengths in series. Such a device is also very energy-efficient.