Communications of the ACM
Spintronics Discovery
Professor John Xiao (standing) and research associate Xin Fan work with the high vacuum magnetron deposition system, which is used to fabricate layered thin films in a vacuum for spintronics research.
Credit: Evan Krape/University of Delaware
University of Delaware researchers have confirmed the presence of a magnetic field generated by electrons. The researchers say their finding expands the potential for harnessing the "spin" of electrons.
They note that conventional semiconductors carry the electrical charge of electrons, but don't use the particles' magnetic, or spin, properties. The Delaware researchers are working to take advantage of those properties and use them in electronic devices.
Controlling the direction of the magnetization is a major goal in the field of spintronics, notes Delaware professor John Xiao. "This magnetic field was predicted previously but was never experimentally confirmed. We demonstrated that it's there," Xiao says. "We now have a new means of generating a magnetic field and controlling the direction of a nanomagnet, as well as a new measurement technique to characterize the magnetic field."
He says their research is particularly important to high-density integrated circuits, such as magnetic random-access memory.
From UDaily (DE)
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2013 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found