In a rapid follow-up to their achievement as the first to demonstrate how an electron's spin can be electrically injected, controlled and detected in silicon, electrical engineers from the University of Delaware and Cambridge NanoTech now show that this quantum property can be transported a marathon distance in the world of microelectronics-- through an entire silicon wafer.
The finding confirms that silicon--the workhorse material of present-day electronics--now can be harnessed up for new-age spintronics applications.
In Appelbaum's lab at UD, the team fabricated a device that injected high-energy, âhotâ electrons from a ferromagnet into the silicon wafer. Another hot-electron structure (made by bonding two silicon wafers together with a thin-film ferromagnet) detected the electrons on the other side.
âElectron spin has a direction, like 'up' or 'down,' â Appelbaum said. âIn silicon, there are normally equal numbers of spin-up and -down electrons. The goal of spintronics is to use currents with most of the electron spins oriented, or polarized, in the same direction.â
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