ABSTRACT
We present an introduction of atomistic tight-binding simulation
of spin-orbit-coupled semiconductor devices, focusing particularly
on the spin-filtering effect in double-barrier resonant tunneling
structures (DBRTS) as a representative example, where the resonant
energy levels in the quantum well is spin-split due to two distinct
spin-orbit coupling (SOC) mechanisms: one is the Dresselhaus-
type SOC arising from the bulk inversion asymmetry (BIA) and the
other is the Rashba-type SOC caused by the structural inversion
asymmetry in the presence of the electric field. Based on the
atomistic sp3s∗ tight binding model calculations including the intraatomic spin-orbit interaction, it is demonstrated that both of the
two SOC mechanisms are naturally observed in the transmission
spectrum through the DBRTS if the in-plane wavenumber is finite,
providing the useful information to obtain the efficient spin-filtering
behavior in DBRTS.
