Spin transport and accumulation in the persistent photoconductor Al0.3_{0.3}Ga0.7_{0.7}As

Electrical spin transport and accumulation have been measured in highly Si doped Al0.3Ga0.7As utilizing a lateral spin transport device. Persistent photoconductivity allows for the tuning of the effective carrier density of the channel material in situ via photodoping. Hanle effect measurements are completed at various carrier densities and the measurements yield spin lifetimes on the order of nanoseconds, an order of magnitude smaller than in bulk GaAs. These measurements illustrate that this methodology can be used to obtain a detailed description of how spin lifetimes depend on carrier density in semiconductors across the metal-insulator transition

Band-tail shape and transport near the metal-insulator transition in Si-doped

In the present work, an infrared light-emitting diode is used to photodope molecular-beam-epitaxy-grown Si: Al0.3Ga0.7As, a well-known persistent photoconductor, to vary the effective electron concentration of samples in situ. Using this technique, we examine the transport properties of two samples containing different nominal doping concentrations of Si [1 x 10(19) cm(-3) for sample 1 (S1) and 9 x 10(17) cm(-3) for sample 2 (S2)] and vary the effective electron density between 10(14) and 10(18) cm(-3). The metal-insulator transition for S1 is found to occur at a critical carrier concentration of 5.7 x 10(16) cm(-3) at 350 mK. The mobilities in both samples are found to be limited by ionized impurity scattering in the temperature range probed, and are adequately described by the Brooks-Herring screening theory for higher carrier densities. The shape of the band tail of the density of states in Al0.3Ga0.7As is found electrically through transport measurements. It is determined to have a power-law dependence, with an exponent of -1.25 for S1 and -1.38 for S2