Robust photogalvanic effect, full spin polarization and pure spin current in the BiC photodetector by vacancy and substitution-doping

Abstract

Abstract The photogalvanic effects (PGEs) in low-dimensional devices have attracted great interests recently. Herein, based on non-equilibrium Green’s function combined with density functional theory, we investigated spin-dependent PGE phenomena in the BiC photodetector with the linearly polarized light and zero bias. Due to the presence of strong spin–orbit interaction (SOI) and C 3v symmetry for the BiC monolayer, the armchair and zigzag BiC photodetectors can produce robust spin-dependent PGEs which possess the cos(2θ) and sin(2θ) relations on the photon energies, respectively. Especially, the pristine armchair and armchair Bi-vacancy BiC photodetectors can produce fully spin polarization, and pure spin current was found in the pristine armchair and zigzag BiC photodetector, respectively. Furthermore, after introducing the Bi-vacancy, C-vacancy, Bi-doping and C-doping respectively, the BiC photodetector can produce higher spin-dependent PGEs for their C s symmetry. Additionally, the behaviors of spin-dependent photoresponse are highly anisotropic which can be tuned by the photon energy. This work suggested great potential applications of the BiC monolayer on PGE-driven photodetectors in low energy-consumption optoelectronics and spintronic devices.