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Giacomo Sala, an experimental physicist at the Paul Scherrer Institute's (PSI) Center for Neutron and Muon Science, has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant worth €2.3 million (about US$2.7 million) over five years for Q-GEOMSPIN, a project aiming to experimentally connect spintronics with the emerging field of quantum geometry for the first time.

Spintronics, which exploits the intrinsic spin of electrons alongside their charge to store and process information, has existed as a field for three decades and underpinned the giant magnetoresistance effect that multiplied hard drive storage density in the 1980s. Quantum geometry, by contrast, describes the geometric structure of electron wave functions inside a solid. Sala's project focuses specifically on a subfield called the quantum metric, which he compares to how mass curves space in general relativity: just as that curvature explains the Earth's orbit around the sun, quantum metric describes a curvature of momentum space that deflects electrons as they move through a material. Theoretical work has suggested this curvature could give rise to spintronic effects that have so far gone unrecognized, a connection Sala says has not yet been tested experimentally.

West Virginia University, in partnership with the University of Delaware, has been awarded a four-year, $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR) to develop magnetic materials that can be switched using electrical pulses alone, without an applied magnetic field. The project, titled "Spin Control via Topology, Symmetry and Dimensionality," is led by WVU physicist Mikel Holcomb, with UD co-principal investigator Ryan Comes and colleagues Joshua Zide and John Xiao; UD's share of the award comes to close to $1.4 million.

Magnetic materials already anchor widely used memory technologies such as hard drives, but changing their magnetic state normally requires generating a magnetic field, a comparatively energy-hungry and hard-to-miniaturize approach. Controlling magnetism directly with electricity instead, by manipulating electron spin, could enable more energy-efficient memory and tighter integration of magnetic storage with conventional electronics, one of the central goals driving spintronics research.

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities, in collaboration with Polar Semiconductor and Honeywell Aerospace, is establishing a first-of-its-kind academic-industry Spin Technology Center to advance the state’s growing microelectronics and semiconductor industry. The $5.7 million project has been awarded $2.83 million from the Minnesota Forward Fund administered by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, with an additional $2.8 million in matching funding from industry partners Polar Semiconductor and Honeywell Aerospace.

The new center will develop quantum spintronic devices focusing on high-tech magnetic sensors and advanced memory storage. These devices are being adapted for cutting-edge applications, including biomedical devices, industrial automation, automotive applications and specialized technologies designed for extreme environments like space.

The University of California, Riverside, according to reports, has been awarded nearly $4 million through the UC National Laboratory Fees Research Program to lead a major research initiative in antiferromagnetic spintronics. Over the next three years, the project will explore how antiferromagnetic materials can be used to push the boundaries of modern microelectronics.

“The semiconductor microelectronics industry is looking for new materials, new phenomena, and new mechanisms to sustain technological advances,” said Jing Shi, a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at UCR and the award’s principal investigator. “With co-principal investigators at UC San Diego, UC Davis, UCLA, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we aim to cement the University of California’s leadership in this area and obtain extramural center and group funding in the near future.”

UC Riverside has received a Collaborative Research and Training Award of nearly $4 million from the UC National Laboratory Fees Research Program to explore how antiferromagnetic spintronics can be used to advantage in advanced memory and computing. The three-year project aims to advance microelectronics using antiferromagnetic materials, an ultrafast spin-based technology.

“The semiconductor microelectronics industry is looking for new materials, new phenomena, and new mechanisms to sustain technological advances,” said Jing Shi, a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at UCR and the award’s principal investigator. “With co-principal investigators at UC San Diego, UC Davis, UCLA, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we aim to cement the University of California’s leadership in this area and obtain extramural center and group funding in the near future.”

Grenoble-based Nellow, a newly-founded deep tech company, has been awarded 2.5 million by the European Innovation Council. 

This funding will help it develop its innovative component, combining ferroelectricity and spintronics, which promises chips that consume 1000 times less energy. The component Nellow is developing is called Feso, and it combines ferroelectricity and spintronics - spinorbitronics, to be exact.

A team of researchers, led by University of Central Florida Pegasus Professor of Physics Enrique Del Barco, is working on a new project that aims to make  electronics faster and more energy efficient. The work is funded by a new $1.3 million award from the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the team includes researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, New York University and University of California, Riverside.

Today’s electronics, from smartphones to electric cars, generate large amounts of heat as electrical currents flow through their components. This heat not only wastes energy but also damages devices over time. The researchers are addressing this issue by developing materials that allow electricity to move through devices without creating heat, potentially transforming how technology is built and powered.

A new project called MultiSpin.AI was launched in February 2024 and will go on for a period of three years. The project has secured funding totaling more than three million euros from the EIC Pathfinder funding program.

MultiSpin.AI proposes to apply spintronics to the field of artificial intelligence. Processing units will be developed for electrical circuits based on magnetic tunnel junctions. This is a quantum phenomenon that allows electrons to behave in ways not foreseen in classical physics, being able to cross obstacles that, under ‘usual’ conditions, they would not have enough energy to overcome.

The EU project 2DSPIN-TECH aims to pave the way for significantly faster and more energy-efficient computer memories. Last week, the project kickoff event took place, with seven partners and €4 million in funding. The project spans three years and is conducted within the framework of the EU’s Graphene Flagship, a multibillion-dollar initiative launched over a decade ago to stimulate research and innovation in graphene and other two-dimensional materials.

“Our ambition is to create novel spintronic memory devices based on two-dimensional quantum materials, significantly reducing energy consumption, promoting sustainability, and enhancing the overall performance of computer memories. This is crucial for the future of information technology,” says Saroj Dash, Professor of quantum component physics at Chalmers University of Technology and coordinator of 2DSPIN-TECH.

Sensor specialist startup Neuranics has secured a $2.3 million investment led by Par Equity. GU Holdings, the investment company for the University of Glasgow, Old College Capital, the University of Edinburgh’s venture investment fund, and London-based Creator Fund, who back scientific founding teams, also participated in the pre-seed round.

Founded in 2021 as a joint spinout from the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh, Neuranics develops pioneering magnetic sensors integrated with semiconductor technology for health, fitness, and metaverse applications. Neuranics’s patented technology uses scalable spintronics sensors powered by semiconductors to detect tiny magnetic signals from organs in the body – for example the heart and muscles of the arms, which the company says could transform the current shortcomings of health monitoring devices and human-machine interfaces.