Thermoballistic Description of Spin-Polarized Electron Transport in Diluted-Magnetic-Semiconductor Heterostructures.

In our previously developed thermoballistic description of electron transport in semiconductor structures, the ballistic and diffusive transport mechanisms are unified. By allowing spin relaxation to take place during the ballistic electron motion between randomly distributed equilibration points, a thermoballistic spin-polarized current is constructed. Here, we adopt the thermoballistic description to treat spin-polarized transport in heterostructures formed of a nonmagnetic semiconducting sample sandwiched between two finite-width layers of diluted magnetic semiconductors. We evaluate the magnetoresistance and the current spin polarization for a specific case and compare the results to those of a purely diffusive treatment. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]