Magneto-optical and tunable laser excitation spectroscopy of spin-injection and spin loss from Zn(Cd)MnSe diluted magnetic quantum well to CdSe non-magnetic quantum dots

Magneto-optical spectroscopy in combination with tunable laser spectroscopy is employed to study the effect of sample design on optical spin-injection efficiency from a Zn(Cd)MnSe diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) into non-magnetic CdSe quantum dots (QDs). Two samples with inverted growth sequence of the DMS and QD layers were grown for this purpose. Despite observation of clear evidence for exciton/carrier-injection from the DMS to the QDs in both structures, their spin-injection efficiency is markedly different. The structure grown with the QD layer topmost exhibits rather efficient spin-injection, while the structure grown with the DMS layer topmost does not show any sign of spin-injection. Even in the former case, the spin-polarization of the injected excitons/carriers is deduced to be about 32%, decreasing from 100% before the injection. The observed spin loss is shown to occur during the spin-injection across the heterointerfaces.