Spintronics and Nanomagnetism - A Revolution in Electronics Driven by Advances in the Fundamental Understanding of Magnetism

Presented by Michael Flatte, University of Iowa

The use of electron spin currents in the storage and manipulation of information (spintronics) and the properties of magnetic materials that are artificially structured on the nanoscale (nanomagnetism) are research areas that have been linked since the discovery of giant magnetoresistance in the late 1980's. Spintronic devices based on giant magnetoresistance have been ubiquitous in hard disks for over a decade and have led to a revolution in information storage density and cost that has transformed computing. Advances in storage density have been driven by fundamental advances in understanding the behavior of small regions of magnetic material and the behavior of spin-polarized currents moving through regions of inhomogeneous magnetization. Recent advances in understanding the flow of spin current in semiconductors, as well as the properties of small numbers of magnetic ions doped into semiconductors, suggest that semiconductor spintronics and nanomagnetism may provide additional benefits for logic devices, including very high speed and very low power consumption.