Tunable all electric spin polarizer

We propose a tunable all-electric spin polarizer made of a quantum point contact (QPC) with four gates-two in-plane side gates in series. The pair of gates near the source is asymmetrically biased to create spin polarization in the QPC channel, the second pair near the drain is symmetrically biased and this bias is varied to maximize the QPC spin polarization. The range of common mode bias on the first set of gates over which maximum spin polarization is achieved is much broader for the four gate structure compared to a QPC with a single pair of gates. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4792745]