Technical

Ron Jansen from the Spintronics Research Center at the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) gives an interesting lecture about recent progress in silicon spintronics:

Tohoku University and Tokyo Electron announced that they will jointly develop Spintronics memory integration and manufacturing technology. Professor Tetsuo Endoh from Tohoku's Center for Spintronics Integrated Systems (CSIS) will lead the research. The aim of this project is to present a miniature highly-integrated Spintronics memory device and the process technologies needed to commercially manufacture it.

The CSIS is considered one of the world's leaders in Spintronics memory, and will contribute its magnetic material technologies, device technologies and design technologies. TEL will contribute process and equipment technologies. Here's a video showing the Spintronics IC work done at the CSIS:

MIT researchers showed that laser can be used to observe electrons spin and even control the electrons movement using polarization. This could lead to a very fast spintronics devices.

The team devised a method that can provide a detailed three-dimensional mapping of the electron energy, momentum and spin states all at once. They did this by using short, intense pulses of circularly polarized laser light whose time of travel can be precisely measured. Using this method they were able to image how the spin and motion are related, for electrons travelling in all different directions and with different momenta, all in a fraction of the time it would take using alternative methods.

Researchers from China's Fudan University say that graphene nanoribbons could potentially be used to create spin valves. They present a theoretic spin valve design that uses two hexagonal graphene "nanoislands" with zig-zag edges, which serve as the magnetic layers in the spin valve, connected by an armchair-type nanoribbon as the non-magnetic layer, through which the electrons can pass depending on the relative alignment of the spins in the nanoislands.

They calcualte that this design enables stable spin configurations at certain energies, and there will be stable configurations in which the islands are polarized either parallel or antiparallel with respect to each other — a necessary requirement for a spin valve.

Researchers from the Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, found out that Organic molecules can exhibit n-type magnetism. They say that conjugated polymers make strong candidates for future spintronic applications.

While organic compounds are interesting for spintronics due to their extremely long spin lifetimes (because of weak spin relaxation effects), it's not very easy to manipulate the spin orientation in organic spin devices. The new class of molecules (known as spin crossover compounds) may solve this issue as their spin state can be changed from low spin to high spin by an external perturbation.

Researchers from the Physical and Technical Institute in Braunschweig, Germany have discovered that waste heat can be used inside magnetic tunnel structures (such as those used in MRAM chips). This means that such structures may be used to monitor and control "thermoelectric voltages" and currents in highly integrated electronic circuits.

In their experiments, the scientists generated a temperature difference between the two magnetic layers and investigated the electric voltage (or "thermoelectric voltage") generated hereby. It turned out that the thermoelectric voltage depends on the magnetic orientation of the two layers nearly as strongly as the electric resistance. By switching the magnetization, it is therefore possible to control the thermoelectric voltage and, ultimately, also the thermal current flowing through the specimen.

New South Wales university (UNSW) announced that they completed and installed their new $1 million Vector Field Facility (VFF) equipment (which took them 5 years to develop and make). This is the world's largest cryogen-free vector magnet system. The VFF will be used to study and develop spintronic and quantum devices, quantum dots, self-assembled nanowires and more.

The VFF can enable very low temperature (0.01 degrees above absolute zero) and apply magnetic fields in any direction.

Researchers from the RIKEN Institute in Japan have shown that the semiconducting material BiTeI could be useful to overcome the weak coupling of electron spin to electrical currents in Spintronics devices.

In spintronic devices, it is difficult to control the up and down spins independently because of the electron energy degeneracy. One way to split the energy of the two spin states is to destroy the symmetry of the atomic lattice at a surface or at the interface between two materials. This is known as the Rashba effect. The new research have experimentally shown a Rashba-type effect in 3D (or bulk) BiTeI.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder (CU) developed a new chip that uses microfluidics and magnetic switches to trap and transport magnetic beads. This low-power device may be useful for medical devices. This technology may also lead us towards "MRAM" chips used for molecular and cellular manipulation.

In the past, magnetic particle transport chips required continuous power and even cooling. This new technology manages to overcome the power and heat issues, and offers random-access two-dimensional control and non-volatile memory. The prototype chip uses 12 spin valves (commonly used as magnetic sensors in HD read heads) which are optimized for magnetic trapping. Pulses of electric current are used to switch individual spin valve magnets “on” to trap a bead, or “off” to release it, and thereby move the bead down a ladder formed by the two lines. The beads start out suspended in salt water above the valves before being trapped in the array.

Researchers from Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a new custom-made material that enabled them to performs measurements important for the emerging field of oxide spintronics.

The team engineered a highly ordered version of a magnetic oxide compound that naturally has two randomly distributed elements: lanthanum and strontium. The team members from ANL have mastered a technique for laying down the oxides one atomic layer at a time, allowing them to construct an exceptionally organized lattice in which each layer contains only strontium or lanthanum, so that the interface between the two components could be studied.