Nonreciprocal charge transport up to room temperature in bulk Rashba semiconductor α-GeTe

Yan Li, Yang Li, Peng Li, Bin Fang, Xu Yang, Yan Wen, Dong-xing Zheng, Chen-hui Zhang, Xin He, Aurélien Manchon, Zhao-Hua Cheng () and Xi-xiang Zhang ()
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Yan Li: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Yang Li: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Peng Li: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Bin Fang: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Xu Yang: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yan Wen: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Dong-xing Zheng: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Chen-hui Zhang: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Xin He: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Aurélien Manchon: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Zhao-Hua Cheng: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xi-xiang Zhang: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Nonmagnetic Rashba systems with broken inversion symmetry are expected to exhibit nonreciprocal charge transport, a new paradigm of unidirectional magnetoresistance in the absence of ferromagnetic layer. So far, most work on nonreciprocal transport has been solely limited to cryogenic temperatures, which is a major obstacle for exploiting the room-temperature two-terminal devices based on such a nonreciprocal response. Here, we report a nonreciprocal charge transport behavior up to room temperature in semiconductor α-GeTe with coexisting the surface and bulk Rashba states. The combination of the band structure measurements and theoretical calculations strongly suggest that the nonreciprocal response is ascribed to the giant bulk Rashba spin splitting rather than the surface Rashba states. Remarkably, we find that the magnitude of the nonreciprocal response shows an unexpected non-monotonical dependence on temperature. The extended theoretical model based on the second-order spin–orbit coupled magnetotransport enables us to establish the correlation between the nonlinear magnetoresistance and the spin textures in the Rashba system. Our findings offer significant fundamental insight into the physics underlying the nonreciprocity and may pave a route for future rectification devices.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20840-7

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