The development of spintronic devices has been limited by the poor compatibility between semiconductors and ferromagnetic sources of spin. The broken inversion symmetry of some semiconductors may allow for spin–charge interconversion, but its control by electric fields is volatile. This has led to interest in ferroelectric Rashba semiconductors, which combine semiconductivity, large spin–orbit coupling and non-volatility. Here we report room-temperature, non-volatile ferroelectric control of spin-to-charge conversion in epitaxial germanium telluride films. We show that ferroelectric switching by electrical gating is possible in germanium telluride, despite its high carrier density. We also show that spin-to-charge conversion has a similar magnitude to what is observed with platinum, but the charge current sign is controlled by the orientation of ferroelectric polarization. Comparison between theoretical and experimental data suggests that the inverse spin Hall effect plays a major role in switchable conversion.

自旋电子器件的发展受到半导体和铁磁自旋源之间较差的兼容性的限制。一些半导体破坏的反转对称性可能允许自旋电荷相互转换，但它对电场的控制是不稳定的。这引起了人们对铁电 Rashba 半导体的兴趣，它结合了半导体性、大自旋轨道耦合和非挥发性。在这里，我们报告了外延碲化锗薄膜中自旋电荷转换的室温、非易失性铁电控制。我们表明，尽管碲化锗的载流子密度很高，但通过电门控进行铁电切换是可能的。我们还表明，自旋电荷转换与铂观察到的量级相似，但充电电流符号受铁电极化方向控制。理论和实验数据的比较表明，逆自旋霍尔效应在可切换转换中起主要作用。