November 2018

Researchers from the University of Würzburg managed to create a molecular spintronics switch, using a manganese phthalocyanine molecule. The researchers succeeded in manipulating this molecule using a special deposit and an electrical field to permanently take on two different states.

This molecule cannot be normally switched, but the researchers managed to develop the switch by placing the molecule on metallic surface built from silver and bismuth atoms.

Researchers from MIT and the Brookhaven National Laboratory have demonstrated how the magnetic properties of thin-film materials can be controlled be using electrically-controlled hydrogen ions.

The researchers say that this new mechanism is much faster and has many advantages over the current method using larger oxygen ions.The researchers have also demonstrated that the process produces no degradation of the material after more than 2,000 cycles. As the hydrogen ions are smaller, they can easily pass through metal layers, which allows to control properties of layers deep in a device that couldn't be controlled in any other way.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its partners in the US Nanoelectronic Computing Research (nCORE) consortium have awarded $10.3 million over four years to establish a spintronics research center in Mineesota.

The Center for Spintronic Materials in Advanced Information Technologies (SMART) will be led by and housed at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and will include researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland.