Memory

Scientists from Ohio University has created a new spintronics memory device from plastic. It’s simply a thin strip of dark blue organic-based magnet layered with a metallic ferromagnet and connected to two electrical leads. Still, the researchers successfully recorded data on it and retrieved the data by controlling the spins of the electrons with a magnetic field. They say that the new device is a bridge between today’s computers and the all-polymer, spintronic computers that the researchers hope to eventually create.

via ZDNet

Professor Russell Cowburn from the Imperial College in London has been awarded €2.8 million to work on spintronics, with the aim of developing new microchips that can store thousands of times more data than today’s microchips.

Professor Cowburn hopes to develop chips that hold many active components stacked on top of each other, allowing more data to be stored in the same sized chip.

Via Media-Newswire

A group led by Professor Hideo Ohno in the Laboratory of Nanoelectronics and Spintronics, at Tohoku University is working to develop new integrated circuits using spintronics. The ICs store data in nonvolatile memory using magnetism (MRAM), so their standby power can be made zero. This memory utilizes the tunnel magneto-resistance effect.

Osaka's university has a Spintronics research group that is working towards MRAM and STT-RAM using several materials including Graphene. Here's a nice intro video about the group:

Prof. Albert Fert (who won the Nobel prize in 2007 for GMR) talks about GMR and Spintronics:

Researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a key magnetic—as opposed to electronic—property of specially built semiconductor devices. This discovery raises hopes for even smaller and faster gadgets that could result from magnetic data storage in a semiconductor material, which could then quickly process the data through built-in logic circuits controlled by electric fields.

In the race to develop the next generation of storage and recording media, a major hurdle has been the difficulty of studying the tiny magnetic structures that will serve as their building blocks. Now a team of physicists at the University of California, Davis, has developed a technique to capture the magnetic “fingerprints” of certain nanostructures — even when they are buried within the boards and junctions of an electronic device.

Due to the miniscule physical dimensions of nanomagnets — some are as small as 50 atoms wide — observing their magnetic configurations has been a challenge, especially when they are not exposed but built into a functioning device.

Researchers in France and the US have lowered the current required for spin transfer down to just 120 microamps at room temperature for a device that measures 45 nm across.

Spin transfer is when the spin angular momentum of charge carriers (usually electrons) in a material is transferred from one place to another. In the MRAM industry, Spin Transfer might help to significantly reduce power consumption, but it draws a large current. But the new technique can help with that. 

Stéphane Mangin from Nancy University and colleagues may fabricated 45 nm diameter spin valves based on cobalt-nickel multilayer elements. Because these devices exhibit perpendicular anisotropy, they are thermally stable and require currents as low as 120 microamps for spin transfer switching without any applied magnetic field.

Via NanoTechWeb

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers now believe that carbon nanotubes can be used to detect nanoscale magnetic states (Spin) by changing their conductance. They demonstrated the change by embedding tiny nanoparticles of magnetic cobalt into multi-walled carbon nanotubes.

The researchers furthermore claim that their findings could enable spintronics applications, nanoscale storage devices and ultra-sensitive conductance detectors.

Via EETimes

MRAM-Info just published a great interview with Dr. Saied Teharni, Everspin's COO. Everspin is the world's leading MRAM company (spun off from Freescale), and are producing MRAM chips since 2006. Dr. Saied reveals plans for higher-density MRAM in 2009 - 16Mbit. Today's chips only go to 4Mbit. He also predicts that by 2015 MRAM will be able to compete with DRAM and FLASH (NOR) with densities.

MRAM is one of the most exciting Spintronics technologies, being commercialized today.