Oblique Hanle effect for reliable assessment of electrical spin injection

Summary form only given. One important aspect of spintronic devices is the effective electrical spin injection into a semiconductor. Optical methods have proven their efficiency for creation and detection of a spin polarized electrons in III-V semiconductors. Due to the high refractive index of such materials the detected light characterizes only the component of electron spin perpendicular to the surface. However, a vast amount of common ferromagnetic thin films, interesting as sources for electrical spin injection, show in-plane magnetic anisotropy, thus making direct optical measurements practically impossible. In order to overcome this limitation we introduce the oblique Hanle effect (OHE) technique to assess spin injection. The application of the OHE to assess successful electrical spin injection from ferromagnetic contact into semiconductors will be presented.