Room‐Temperature Gate‐Tunable Nonreciprocal Charge Transport in Lattice‐Matched InSb/CdTe Heterostructures

Symmetry manipulation can be used to effectively tailor the physical order in solid‐state systems. With the breaking of both the inversion and time‐reversal symmetries, nonreciprocal magneto‐transport may arise in nonmagnetic systems to enrich spin–orbit effects. Here, the observation of unidirectional magnetoresistance (UMR) in lattice‐matched InSb/CdTe films is investigated up to room temperature. Benefiting from the strong built‐in electric field of 0.13 V nm−1 in the heterojunction region, the resulting Rashba‐type spin–orbit coupling and quantum confinement result in a distinct sinusoidal UMR signal with a nonreciprocal coefficient that is 1–2 orders of magnitude larger than most non‐centrosymmetric materials at 298 K. Moreover, this heterostructure configuration enables highly efficient gate tuning of the rectification response, wherein the UMR amplitude is enhanced by 40%. The results of this study advocate the use of narrow‐bandgap semiconductor‐based hybrid systems with robust spin textures as suitable platforms for the pursuit of controllable chiral spin–orbit applications. Lattice‐matched InSb/CdTe heterostructures are utilized to tailor the nonreciprocal charge transport up to room temperature. Benefiting from both the inversion symmetry breaking and interfacial Rashba spin–orbit coupling, this nonmagnetic hybrid system not only warrants a pronounced unidirectional magnetoresistance effect, but also enables highly efficient gate tuning of the rectification response, hence offering feasible strategies for controllable spin–orbit applications.