Spin injection across a heterojunction: A ballistic picture

Spin injection across heterojunctions plays a decisive role in the new field of spintronics. Within the ballistic transport regime, we state a general expression for the spin-injection rate in a heterojunction made of two ballistic electrodes. Both the spin-orbit interaction and interface scattering effect are taken into account. Our model is consistent with the well-documented results of ferromagnetic-metal junctions. It explains the recent experimental results of a dilute-magnetic-semiconductor/semiconductor junction and predicts solutions to enhance the spin-injection rate across a ferromagnetic-semiconductor junction.