spintronics tagged posts

Electron spin, rather than charge, holds the key. As our devices become smaller, faster, more energy efficient, and capable of holding larger amounts of data, spintronics may continue that trajectory. Whereas electronics is based on the flow of electrons, spintronics is based on the spin of electrons.

An electron has a spin degree of freedom, meaning that it not only holds a charge but also acts like a little magnet. In spintronics, a key task is to use an electric field to control electron spin and rotate the north pole of the magnet in any given direction.

The spintronic field effect transistor harnesses th...

An intermediate layer consisting of a few atoms is helping to improve the transport of spin currents from one material to another. Until now, this process involves significant losses. A team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Microstructure Physics, and the Freie Universität Berlin reports in the scientific journal ACS Nano Letters on how this can be avoided. The researchers thus demonstrate important new insights relevant for many spintronic applications, for example energy-efficient and ultrafast storage technologies of the future.

In modern microelectronics, the charge of electrons is used to carry information in electronic components, mobile p...

With the help of a “playground” they created for observing exotic physics, MIT scientists and colleagues have not only found a new way to manipulate magnetism in a material with light but have also realized a rare form of matter. The former could lead to applications including computer memory storage devices that can read or write information in a much faster way, while the latter introduces new physics.

A solid material is composed of different types of elementary particles, such as protons and neutrons. Also ubiquitous in such materials are “quasiparticles” that the public is less familiar with...

Most scientists would blanch at being labeled a spin doctor. But when it comes to Evgeny Tsymbal, Ding-Fu Shao and their colleagues, the lab coat fits.

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln physicists have charged to the forefront of spintronics, a next-gen class of data storage and processing poised to complement the digital electronics that have ruled the realm of high tech for decades.

Ahead of that future, though, loom nanoscale obstacles whose size belies their difficulty...