Optical injection of spin-polarized carriers across a strongly mismatched heterostructure

We observed an effective injection of spin-polarized carriers from II-VI Zn 0.97Mn0.03Te diluted magnetic semiconductor spin aligning layer into III-V- based, GaAs-based quantum well structure. By using circular polarized excit ation and detection, we demonstrate that the injection of spin-polarized ca rriers indeed proceeds through the II-VI/III-V interface in spite of a huge lattice mismatch (similar to7.8%) which is decorated by a great number of dislocations. This indicates that spins are quite robust and maintain their polarization memory even after passing through a dense array of misfit dis locations. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.