Spintronics: computation and memory technology using electron spin

For the first six months of fiscal 2009, total revenue increased 9% to $10.6 million from $9.71 million for the first six months of fiscal 2008. The revenue increase was primarily due to a 10% increase in product sales to $9.42 million for the first half of fiscal 2009 from $8.58 million for the prior-year period.

A research team at Singapore A*STAR's Data Storage Institute (DSI) has invented a new phase change material that has the potential to change the design of future memory storage devices.

Phase change materials are substances that are capable of changing their structure between amorphous and crystalline at high speed. Currently, these materials are used to make Phase change memory (PCM), the most promising alternative to replace FLASH memory.

Conventionally, PCM is worked by changing phase change materials' structure through applying an electric current. Now, phase change might be effected by means of switching the new phase change materials by using magnetic fields.

The DSI research team led by Shi Luping, Ph.D., created this first phase change magnetic material by introducing iron atoms into Germanium-Antimony-Tellurium alloys (or GeSbTe) containing non-magnetic elements.

In the heated rod, electrons with spins that are aligned “up,” or with the material’s magnetic field, tend to prefer the warmer side, while those with spins pointing in the opposite direction, or “down,” tend to prefer the cooler side, the researchers report in the Oct. 9 Nature.

Their "camera," described this week in the journal Nature, consists of a special "flaw" in diamonds that can be manipulated into sensitively monitoring magnetic signals from individual electrons and atomic nuclei placed nearby.

Armed with nearly $11 million in National Science Foundation funding, Ohio State University will work over the next several years to develop a research center to explore the next step in high-tech electronics.

Ohio State's centre will focus on manipulating materials such as plastic, silicon and semiconductors and researching in the field of “magnetoelectronics,” also called “spintronics.” The field involves the spin of electrons in atoms and how that can lead to better and faster computer technology.

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The Department’s Professor Mike Adams explains: 'The research topic is "Injected Spin Lasers", that is lasers whose output polarisation is controlled by the injection of spin-polarised electrons. Polarisation is a property of waves that describes the orientation of their oscillations. Circular polarisation of laser radiation means that the tip of the electric field vector, at a fixed point in space, describes a circle as time progresses. Circular polarisation is referred to as right or left, depending on the direction in which the electric field vector rotates. An electron has one of two types of spin: spin up or spin down. In a spin-injected laser, spin down electrons couple to right circularly polarised radiation, whilst spin up electrons couple to left circularly polarised radiation, thus allowing us to control the output polarisation of the laser.'

Virginia Tech chemistry Professor Harry Dorn has developed a new area of fullerene chemistry that may be the backbone for development of molecular semiconductors and quantum computing applications.

As part of the research to place gadolinium atoms inside the carbon cage for MRI applications, Dorn created 80-atom carbon molecule with two yttrium ions inside. Then he began to fool with the materials of the cage itself. He replaced one of the 80 atoms of carbon with an atom of nitrogen (providing Y2@C79N). This change leaves the nitrogen atom with an extra electron. Dorn discovered that the extra electron, instead of being on the nitrogen atom on the fullerene cage surface, ducks inside between the yttrium ions, forming a one-electron bond. "Basically, a very unusual one electron bond between two yttrium atoms," he said.

Hitachi and the Tohoku University's Research Institute of Electrical Communication (RIEC) said they developed a new integrated circuit that integrates an arithmetic function and a nonvolatile memory function by using spintronics and Si technologies.

The IC is made by placing a MTJ (magnetic tunnel junction) MRAM device on a Si chip with a MOS transistor. The data transfer rate is faster, and the IC is small using that method.

The idea is that a circuit that combines memory and a arithmetic unit is faster and smaller 

The prototype chip is a full adder composed of the SUM and CARRY blocks. The SUM block measures 15.5 x 10.7?m, and the CARRY block is 13.9 x 10.7?m. The CMOS logic block was formed with Hitachi's 0.18?m process technology.