Research

Existing semiconductor devices operate through the electric charge of electrons. In addition to the electric charge, an electron also has the other property of spin, which is a magnetic property. The electron spin in a solid can be aligned in a certain direction (Fig. 1a) or rotated about a specific axis (Fig. 1bc), depending on the situation. The key to realizing next-generation electronic devices is to control such electron spin in semiconductor devices. In this study, we used indium-, gallium-, and arsenic-based field-effect transistors (Fig. 2) and performed electrical measurements in a cryogenic environment (absolute temperature of 20 mK) using a dilution refrigerator (Fig. 3). In this way, we were able to precisely determine for the first time the spin-orbit interaction coefficient, which is necessary to control electron spin (Fig. 4).