Spintronics

Using flexible organic semiconductors, researchers at Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Fribourg have made a discovery that could lead to the simultaneous storing and processing of data on the same computer chip, bringing a dramatic improvement in power efficiency and reduced weight of electronic devices. Read More

Tired of waiting for your computer to boot up? Within five to seven years, you may no longer have to. That’s the estimated amount of time it will take to bring Racetrack Memory to market. Racetrack is a proposed new shock-proof system that is said to be 100,000 times faster than current hard drives, while also being 300 times more energy-efficient. Although it incorporates cutting-edge nanotechnology, it’s based on the same principles as the humble VHS videotape. Read More

Researchers at two different institutions have recently announced the development of technologies for converting waste heat from electronics into something useful. At the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), they’ve created a silicon nanomesh film that could collect heat from electric appliances such as computers or refrigerators and convert it to electricity. Meanwhile, their colleagues at Ohio State University (OSU) have been working with a semiconducting material that has the capacity to turn waste heat from computers into additional processing power. Read More

Spin electronics, or “spintronics” promises to revolutionize computing. We’ve covered numerous breakthroughs in the field including controlling the spin of electrons, manipulating single electrons independently, and the first plastic spintronic computer memory device. However, one major hurdle for spintronics researchers has been the difficulty in detecting the flow of spinning electrons in real time. The discovery of a new way to recognize currents of spinning electrons within a semiconductor changes that and could lead the way to the development of superior computers and electronics. Read More

Spintronics – or spin electronics – is an emerging technology that exploits the intrinsic spin of the electron rather than its charge, as is the case with current electronic devices. The technology promises microelectronic devices that can store more data in less space, process data faster, and consume less power. Researchers at Ohio State University (OSU) have now demonstrated the first plastic memory device that utilizes the spin of electrons to read and write data. Read More

The superfast computers of tomorrow will likely be able to manipulate individual electrons, harnessing their charge and magnetism to achieve massive data storage and outstanding processing speeds at very low power requirements. But how exactly do you go about manipulating single electrons independently, without affecting the ones nearby? Princeton University's Jason Petta has recently demonstrated a way to do just that in a breakthrough for the field of spintronics that brings faster and low-power number-crunching closer to reality. Read More

In a recent issue of the journal Nature, researchers from the University of Twente, Netherlands, explain how they succeeded in transferring magnetically coded information directly into a semiconductor, for the first time at room temperatures. Meanwhile, Toshiba announced at the International Electronics Devices Meeting (IEDM) it has developed a MOSFET transistor harnessing spintronics, demonstrating stable, fast and low-power performance. Read More

Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made important advances in the field of spintronics by demonstrating the ability to electrically manipulate, at room temperatures, the quantum states of electrons trapped in the atomic structural defects of diamond crystals. Despite previous indications to the contrary, such quantum states can be manipulated very quickly, even at gigahertz frequencies, paving the way to significantly faster quantum computing. Read More

A team of researchers from the University of Cincinnati have achieved control of the spin of electrons traveling on a wire by simply regulating an electrical voltage. This is a major milestone in the brief history of spintronics, the emerging technology that uses the spin of electrons to store and manipulate digital information with much higher speeds and efficiency. Read More