Spintronics-Info - Technical

IBM and ETH Zurich university build joint nanotech lab, with Spintronics as one of the research targets

spin — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:13:51 -0500

IBM and the ETH Zürich University have agreed to jointly build a laboratory for nanotechnology research. The research activities aim at technologies for the post-CMOS era such as carbon-based materials, nano photonics, spintronics, nanowires and tribology.

The lab will have a 90$ million investment. About one third will go to purchase equipment. The work will begin in Spring 2009, and the activities will start in 2011, and planned to last at least 10 years.

UC Riverside's lab proposes a simple technique for controlling electron spin and current flow

spin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:26:53 -0500

Physicists at UC Riverside have made an accidental discovery in the lab that has potential to change how information in computers can be transported or stored. Dependent on the "spin" of electrons, a property electrons possess that makes them behave like tiny magnets, the discovery could help in the development of spin-based semiconductor technology such as ultrahigh-speed computers.

The researchers were experimenting with ferromagnet/semiconductor (FM/SC) structures, which are key building blocks for semiconductor spintronic devices (microelectronic devices that perform logic operations using the spin of electrons). The FM/SC structure is sandwich-like in appearance, with the ferromagnet and semiconductor serving as microscopically thin slices between which lies a thinner still insulator made of a few atomic layers of magnesium oxide (MgO).

NVE Notified of Two Spintronics Patent Grants

spin — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:19:42 -0500

NVE Corporation has been notified by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office of the expected grant today of two patents relating to spintronics.

The first patent is number 7,390,584 and titled "Spin dependent tunneling devices having reduced topological coupling." Spin-dependent tunnel junctions, also known as magnetic tunnel junctions or tunneling magnetic junctions, are spintronic structures that can form the heart of spintronic magnetoresistive random access memory technology, commonly known as MRAM.

Cold copper causes spin diffusion

spin — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:20:53 -0500

Researchers at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute (formerly the Frontier Research System) in Wako and the University of Tokyo have completed an important study into the effects that temperature can have on spintronic devices ("Temperature Evolution of Spin Relaxation in a NiFe/Cu Lateral Spin Valve"). Spintronics relies on the effective transport of ‘spin-polarized’ currents, in which electrons all have the same spin. Spin-polarized currents flow well in magnetic materials, but when they enter non-magnetic materials the electrons begin to lose their spin polarization in a process called spin-flip scattering. The length scale over which the electrons remain polarized, called the spin diffusion length, is particularly important for fabricating devices.

Industrial dye might hold the key to advancing spintronics

spin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:47:38 -0500

Commonly used industrial dyes hold the key to advancing the new science of 'spintronics', say researchers working on a new a £2.5 million study.

The new Basic Technology grant awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council will support research into the magnetic properties of metal atoms found in industrial dyes such as Metal Phthalocyanine (MPc), a blue dye used in clothing. The team from the London Centre for Nanotechnology - a joint venture between Imperial College London and University College London - and the University of Warwick believes that finding ways to control and exploit these molecules will allow spintronics to be applied in new ways.

Oregon Physicists Finds Possible Electron Switch

spin — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:56:33 -0500

University of Oregon researchers trying to flip the spin of electrons with laser bursts lasting picoseconds (a trillionth of a second) instead found a way to manipulate and control the spin -- knowledge that may prove useful in a variety of new materials and technologies.

Physicists in recent years have been pursuing a variety of routes to tap electron spins for their potential use in quantum computers that can perform millions of computations at a time and store immense quantities of data or for use in emerging optic devices or spintronics.

Appelbaum wins DEPSCoR grant for spintronics research

spin — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:22:42 -0500

Ian Appelbaum, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Delaware, has received a $484,370 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) for a major study on spintronics.

The DEPSCoR grant will enable Appelbaum and his team to explore the use of spin transport in the semiconductor silicon to enhance the speed and design of integrated circuits for spintronics.

Chromium's Hidden Magnetic Talents Discovered

spin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:01:24 -0500

Two Dartmouth researchers have determined that the element chromium displays electrical properties of magnets in surprising ways. This finding can be used in the emerging field of "spintronics," which might someday contribute to new and more energy efficient ways of processing and storing data.

"The phenomena that we have discovered are likely to lead to new applications of chromium," says Yeong-Ah Soh, the lead researcher on the paper and an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth. She worked on the study with Ravi Kummamuru, a former post-doctoral research associate at Dartmouth now at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne.

IBM shows New racetrack memory technology

spin — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:21:31 -0500

In two papers published in the April 11 issue of Science, IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin and colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose describe both the fundamentals of a technology dubbed "racetrack" memory as well as a milestone in that technology. This milestone could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with lightning-fast boot times, far lower cost and unprecedented stability and durability.

Within the next ten years, racetrack memory, so named because the data "races" around the wire "track," could lead to solid state electronic devices - with no moving parts, and therefore more durable - capable of holding far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today. For example, this technology could enable a handheld device such as an mp3 player to store around 500,000 songs or around 3,500 movies - 100 times more than is possible today - with far lower cost and power consumption. The devices would not only store vastly more information in the same space, but also require much less power and generate much less heat, and be practically unbreakable; the result: massive amounts of personal storage that could run on a single battery for weeks at a time and last for decades.

NVE Notified of Patent Grant for Superparamagnetic Devices

spin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:56:44 -0500

NVE Corporation has been notified by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office of the expected grant today of patent number 7,355,822, titled "Superparamagnetic Devices" and assigned to NVE.

Superparamagnetism is the magnetic state of a material between highly ordered parallel spins (ferromagnetism) and randomly ordered spins (paramagnetism). The superparamagnetic effect occurs in ferromagnetic structures smaller than a critical value or at temperatures higher than a critical temperature.