Collaborative Research: Design and Demonstration of Persistent Spin Textures in Ferroelectric Oxide Thin Film

The goal of project is to design and deliver a disruptive suite of new materials embodying a persistent spin texture (PST) structure – a unique quantum state of a material – that permits both encoding information in the spins of electrons, rather than charge, and making those spins robust to corruption as they propagate in ferroelectric oxides. The intellectual merit is found in exploiting a relativistic quantum mechanical effect – spin-orbit interaction (SOI) and topology – to achieve the PST through a unidirectional spin-orbit field Ω(k) in momentum space that protects the state of the spins. To that end, the project couples first-principles predictions, phenomenological theory, and thermodynamic assessments with experimental pulsed-laser deposition, materials characterization, and device fabrication and testing of complex transition metal oxides to deliver new ferroelectric PST materials. The project outcomes include ascertaining the feasibility of PST materials and atomic scale control routes to optimize the persistent-spin-helix lifetime and period in device-relevant geometries.