ABSTRACT
One of the most important topics in spintronics is spin transport, i.e., how do spin polarized carriers travel through a piece of metal and semiconductor and what happens to their spin polarizations in the presence of various spin relaxing mechanisms such as D’yakonov-Perel’, Elliott-Yafet, Bir-Aronov-Pikus and hyperfine interactions with nuclear spins. This topic has been dealt with extensively in the literature leading to a hierarchy of spin transport models. The two primary models are the so-called drift-diffusion model and the more sophisticated semi-classical model. In this chapter, we briefly discuss these two models. There are of course other models that have been used in the literature, but these two are the most popular and have emerged as the mainstays of spintronic device simulation.
