A new type of blockade effect - spin-orbit blockade (SOB) - is found in the conduction of a quantum dot (QD) made of a material with spin-orbit interaction. The blockade arises from spin-filtering effect in a quantum point contact (QPC), which is a component of the QD. Hence the appearance of the blockade itself evidences the spin-filtering effect in the QPC. The lower bound of filtering efficiency is estimated to be above 80%.
@article{arxiv.1102.4648,
title = {Evidence of Spin-Filtering in Quantum Constrictions with Spin-Orbit Interaction},
author = {Sunwoo Kim and Yoshiaki Hashimoto and Yasuhiro Iye and Shingo Katsumoto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.4648},
year = {2012}
}