spintronics tagged posts

Researchers have developed a revolutionary way to encode computational information without using electrical current. As a global first, this could lead to faster technological devices that could efficiently use energy without overheating.

Modern computer memory encodes information by switching magnetic bits within devices. Now, a ground-breaking study conducted by researchers from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore has found a new efficient way of using ‘spin waves’ to switch magnetisation at room temperature for more energy-efficient spin memory and logic devices.

Traditional electronic chips s...

Electric currents drive all our electronic devices. The emerging field of spintronics looks to replace electric currents with what are known as spin currents. Researchers from the University of Tokyo have made a breakthrough in this area. Their discovery of the magnetic spin Hall effect could lead to low-power, high-speed and high-capacity devices. They have created sample devices which can further research into potential applications.

“Electricity lit up the world and electronics connected it,” says Professor Yoshichika Otani from the Institute for Solid State Physics. “Spintronics will be the next step forward in this procession and we can only imagine what advances it may bring.”

So wha...

Hugo Dil and Juraj Krempasky with the experimental set-up at the Paul Scherrer Institut. Credit: Hugo Dil/EPFL

Physicists have found a way to reverse electron spins using electric fields for the first time, paving the way for programmable spintronics technologies. Spintronics is a field of physics that studies the spin of electrons, an intrinsic type of magnetism that many elementary particles have. The field of spintronics has given rise to technological concepts of “spintronic devices,” which would run on electron spins, rather than their charge, used by traditional electronics.

In order to build programmable spintronic devices we first need to be able to manipulate spins in certain materials...

1, Bismuthene film interrupted at a step in the silicon carbide substrate viewed through a scanning tunnelling microscope. The film areas inevitably end at the substrate step and a conducting edge channel (white) occurs.
2. Schematic illustration of the conducting edge channels at the boundaries of the bismuthene film. The edge channels protect the spins against scattering and thereby allow loss-free and efficient spin-based data transmission.

It’s ultra-thin, electrically conducting at the edge due to quantum effects and insulating within – and all that at room temperature: Physicists from the University of Würzburg have developed a promising new material. The material class of topological insulators is presently the focus of international solids research...