Appelbaum Research 2009-present

Ian Appelbaum

1 Research
From 2004-2008 I was an Assistant Professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware. The present document focuses on my subsequent
appointment: Specifically, highlights of my research progress while at the University of
Maryland, College Park (UMD) after joining as a tenured Associate Professor of Physics
in 2009.
My most important research results over the past five years at UMD involve unexpected discoveries of physical processes relevant to non-equilibrium spin-polarized electron transport in semiconductors. Specifically, our major contributions involve identification of phenomena where the bandstructure, crystal symmetry, and isoenergetic surface
topology play a major role in spin transport. This difficult experimental work is enabled
by our unique ability to fabricate solid-state devices with unconventional techniques developed by my group and funded by over $2M from ONR/NSF/DOE awarded while at
UMD since 2009. Below, I describe one significant paper from each year:
2009. Hyuk-Jae Jang and Ian Appelbaum, Spin Polarized Electron Transport near the
Si/SiO2 Interface, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 117202 (2009). [37 citations]: As spinpolarized electrons are attracted to the oxide interface by an electrostatic gate,
we observed a paradox: shorter average spin transit times to the detector and an
increase in spin coherence, despite a reduction in total spin polarization. This behavior, which is in contrast with the expected exponential depolarization seen in
bulk transport devices, is explained using a transform method to recover the empirical spin current transit-time distribution and a simple two-stage drift-diffusion
model. We identified strong interface-induced spin depolarization (reducing the
spin lifetime by over 2 orders of magnitude from its bulk transport value) as the
consistent cause of these phenomena. This was followed up with extensive finitedifferences modeling in Jing Li and Ian Appelbaum, Modeling spin transport in
electrostatically-gated lateral-channel silicon devices: Role of interfacial spin relaxation, Phys. Rev. B 84, 165318 (2011) and further experiments in Jing Li and
Ian Appelbaum, Lateral spin transport through bulk silicon, Appl. Phys. Lett.
100, 162408 (2012). Through an international collaboration, we have begun to
apply resonant microwave techniques to identify the microscopic mechanism for
this relaxation pathway, already showing that resonant microwave irradiation can
be used to induce spin rotation of spin-polarized electrons as they travel across a
silicon channel. [C. Lo, J. Li, I. Appelbaum, and J.J.L. Morton, Microwave manipulation of electrically injected spin polarized electrons in silicon, Phys. Rev.
Applied 1, 014006 (2014)]

2010. Biqin Huang and Ian Appelbaum, The Larmor clock and anomalous spin dephasing in silicon, Phys. Rev. B Rapid Comm. 82, 241202(R) (2010). (Editors
Suggestion) [20 citations]: Here we showed that measurement of coherent spin
precession in a controllable magnetic field can be transformed into an empirical
spin transit time distribution with sub-nanosecond resolution, without the need for
time-of-flight methods. A spin analogue of the classic Haynes-Shockley experiment
(for minority charge carriers) is then possible. Analysis of these distributions from
long-distance spin transport in silicon revealed a spin diffusion coefficient inconsistent with the Einstein relation, as expected for non-conserved quantities like
spin.
2011. Yuan Lu, Jing Li, and Ian Appelbaum, Spin-Polarized Transient Electron Trapping in Phosphorus-doped Silicon, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 217202 (2011). [11 citations] Using the Larmor clock analysis described above to examine transport
data from silicon with intentional impurities, we observed two distinct processes:
(i) short time scales (50 ps) due to purely conduction-band transport from injector to detector and (ii) long time scales (1 ns) originating from delays associated with capture or reemission in shallow impurity traps. The origin of this
phenomenon, examined via temperature, voltage, and electron density dependence
measurements, was established by means of a comparison to a numerical model
inspired by probabilistic queuing theory, and is shown to reveal the participation
of metastable excited states in the phosphorus-impurity spectrum. This work then
inspired ongoing research (funded by ONR) into radiative emission from impurity
level transitions and the manipulation of spin selection rules for controllable THz
sources.
2012. Jing Li, Lan Qing, Hanan Dery, and Ian Appelbaum, Field-induced negative differential spin lifetime in silicon, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 157201 (2012). [21 citations]
In this work detailing the analysis of spin-transport measurements in high electric
fields, we showed that the electric-field-induced thermal asymmetry between the
electron and lattice systems in pure silicon substantially impacts the identity of the
dominant spin relaxation mechanism. Comparison of empirical results from longdistance spin transport devices with detailed Monte Carlo simulations confirms a
strong spin depolarization beyond what is expected from the standard Elliott-Yafet
theory even at low temperatures. The enhanced spin-flip mechanism is attributed
to phonon emission processes during which electrons are scattered between conduction band valleys that reside on different crystal axes. This leads to anomalous
behavior, where (beyond a critical field) reduction of the transit time between
spin-injector and spin-detector is accompanied by a counterintuitive reduction in
spin polarization and an apparently negative spin lifetime.
2013. Pengke Li, Jing Li, Lan Qing, Hanan Dery, and Ian Appelbaum, Anisotropydriven spin relaxation in germanium, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 257204 (2013). (Editors Suggestion): We demonstrated an extraordinary mechanism in centrosymmetric diamond-lattice germanium which is reminiscent of the Dyakonov-Perel spin
relaxation process that dominates in noncentrosymmetric semiconductor crystal
lattices. In that well-known case, broken spatial inversion symmetry allows spinorbit interaction to cause a momentum-dependent spin splitting; intravalley scattering during spin precession about this random effective magnetic field leads to
depolarization. By straightforwardly showing the suppression of spin polarization
with a longitudinal magnetic field in germanium spin-transport devices, we iden-

tify an analogous spin relaxation pathway driven by the presence of an additional

random field whose origin is rooted instead in the broken time reversal symmetry, and intervalley scattering allows g-factor anisotropy to drive its fluctuation
between four different orientations. In my opinion, this is the first experimental
result which fully demonstrates the sensitivity of spin transport to band structure
topology and symmetry through the spin-orbit interaction.

2 Current and Future directions

Several important topics in semiconductor spintronics supported in part by existing
funded projects:
Recently, we have obtained initial results on THz emission from doped Si
devices (see 2011 paper above), motivating our present work on utilizing
spectroscopically-isolated impurity-level transition lines to produce controllably circularly-polarized radiation resulting from the spin selection rules.
This is a major standing problem in the field, relevant to e.g. chiral molecule
analysis.
Breaking discrete rotational symmetry with uniaxial strain: Spin relaxation in
indirect-bandgap centrosymmetric semiconductors is dominated by electronphonon-mediated intervalley scattering. Lattice distortion caused by mechanical stress breaks the valley degeneracy and suppresses this scattering, which
should lead to massively enhanced spin lifetimes. Our tunnel junction injectors can easily withstand the necessary strain and we have developed the
necessary device fabrication and built a low-temperature strain vise probe
with custom contact geometry.
Electron spin resonance: In addition to collaboration with Mortons lab as
described above, we are also building our own low-temperature ESR system
to explore resonance identification of paramagnetic centers, and provide additional evidence of e.g. strain-induced spin lifetime enhancement in Si and
Ge.
Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy: We have used this technique to identify extrinsic contributions to a magnetoresistance phenomenon that has captured the attention of the spintronics community since it mimics spin detection: H. Tinkey, P. Li, and I. Appelbaum, Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy of local spin accumulation devices, Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 232410
(2014). I have also developed a rigorously self-consistent method for simulating true spin-accumulation magnetoresistance: I. Appelbaum, H. N. Tinkey,
and P. Li, Self-consistent model of spin accumulation magnetoresistance in
ferromagnet-insulator-semiconductor tunnel junctions, cond-mat/1408.1003.
Alternative spin detection schemes: described in Bryan Hemingway and Ian
Appelbaum, A Differential Spin Detection Scheme, J. Appl. Phys. 114,
093907 (2013). Ongoing fabrication and measurement to benchmark the proposed technique under current DTRA funding.
Spin photonics: High-Q silicon-on-insulator ring-resonators coupled to linear
waveguides can extend the optical pathlength by many orders of magnitude,
amplifying nonreciprocal Faraday rotation when spin-polarized electrons are
injected to break time-reversal symmetry. This will enable the sensitive detection of polarized photon interactions with crystalline semiconductors and

perhaps indicate a pathway to developing important optical isolators for integrated optical components. Also part of DTRA funding.
Broader Interests within Condensed Matter Physics:
In the past year, I have taken considerable time to develop an understanding
of several other condensed-matter subjects, especially during my semester of
teaching relief in Spring 2013. During this period, I spent 3 days a week at
Harvard under the gracious hospitality of Prof. Amir Yacoby as a Visiting
Scholar, primarily on numerical modeling of spin-orbit-coupled superconductor materials and detection schemes for observing the predicted Majorana fermion in these systems. This resulted in two papers, one describing a
novel technique [Ian Appelbaum, Tunnel conductance spectroscopy via harmonic generation in a hybrid capacitor device, Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 122604
(2013)], and a funded proposal (NSF-DMR unsolicited) to carry out its experimental realization using materials from epitaxial-growth collaborators at
Adelphi Army Research Labs. The other makes use of electrostatic detection
and is under review at Phys. Rev. X: G. Ben-Shach, A. Haim, I. Appelbaum,
Y. Oreg, A. Yacoby and B.I. Halperin, Detecting Majoranas in 1D wires by
charge sensing, cond-mat/1406.5172
Through interactions with my other CME colleagues, I developed a numerical
model predicting a unique signature of surface states on dielectric insulators
on the polarized resonant transmission spectrum, now published as I. Appelbaum, Cross-Polarized Microwave Surface-State Anti-Resonance, J. Appl.
Phys. 116, 064903 (2014). This work is potentially relevant to the search for
novel topological insulators, a presently active topic in CME with which I have
some prior contributions through collaborations with other CNAM faculty:
Ian Appelbaum, H.D. Drew, and M.S. Fuhrer, Proposal for a topological
spin rectifier, Appl. Phys. Lett. 98, 023103 (2011) and C. Ojeda-Aristizabal,
M. S. Fuhrer, N. P. Butch, J. Paglione, and Ian Appelbaum, Towards spin
injection from silicon into topological insulators: Schottky barrier between Si
and Bi2 Se3 , Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 023102 (2012).
With postdoc Pengke Li, I have analyzed the electronic bandstructure including spin-orbit interaction close to the insulating gap edge in monolayer black
phosphorus (phosphorene). Expressions for energy dispersion relation and
spin-dependent eigenstates for electrons and holes were found via simplification of a perturbative expansion in wavevector k away from the zone center
using elementary group theory. Importantly, we exposed the underlying symmetries giving rise to substantial anisotropy in optical absorption, charge and
spin transport properties, and revealed the mechanism responsible for valence
band distortion and possible lack of a true direct gap. P. Li and I. Appelbaum,
Electrons and holes in phosphorene, cond-mat/1408.0770

3 Presentations/publications 2009-present
Invited seminars and colloquia: 24 (47 total)
Invited talks in international conferences and workshops: 27 (35 total)
Papers published: 21 (60 total), 5 more in review and on arxiv
Citations (Google/ISI):
total: 2236/1415
h-index: 17/15
Citations by year (as of 7/14):

Publications by year (as of 7/14):