researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have used new a experimental technique to measure heating in spintronic devices, allowing direct comparison to other effects. The researchers say that this technique can be used to select spintronic materials whose magnetic behavior is minimally impacted by heating, leading to faster devices.

"Spintronic devices depend on the ability to change magnetization using electric currents, but there are two possible explanations for it: electromagnetic interactions with the current, or the increase in temperature caused by the current," said Axel Hoffmann, project lead and Illinois materials science and engineering professor. "If you want to optimize the function of the device, you have to understand the underlying physics. That's what our approach helped us to do."

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.

Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Latvia have announced "a breakthrough in antiferromagnetic spintronics" that could expand the nanotechnology’s capabilities, which have been limited by their need for excessive power. 

The team showed that introducing boron — a process called B-doping — into magnetoelectric oxides can control magnetic fields at the high temperatures prevalent in electronics. This long has been the “holy grail” of such research, said Christian Binek, Charles Bessey Professor of physics.

A Spanish-German collaboration recently studied graphene-cobalt-iridium heterostructures at BESSY II. The results show how two desired quantum-physical effects reinforce each other in these heterostructures, which could lead to new spintronic devices based on these materials.

Spintronics uses the spins of electrons to perform logic operations or store information. Ideally, spintronic devices could operate faster and more energy-efficiently than conventional semiconductor devices. However, it is still difficult to create and manipulate spin textures in materials. Graphene, a 2D honeycomb structure made of carbon atoms, is considered an interesting candidate for spintronic applications. Graphene is typically deposited on a thin film of heavy metal. At the interface between graphene and heavy metal, a strong spin-orbit coupling develops, which gives rise to different quantum effects, including a spin-orbit splitting of energy levels (Rashba effect) and a canting in the alignment of spins (Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction). The spin canting effect is especially needed to stabilize vortex-like spin textures, known as skyrmions, which are particularly suitable for spintronics.

Researchers from Osaka University, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed copolymer films that interact differently with currents with opposite polarization. 

Despite their identical composition, molecules that are mirror images can interact differently with light and electrical current depending on their chirality. In a recent study, the research team produced spin-coated chiral copolymer films that display strong spin polarization, which enables the films to act as "spin filters" that behave differently toward currents with opposite polarization directions.

Researchers from Delft University of Technology and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have initiated a controlled movement in the heart of an atom, causing the atomic nucleus to interact with one of the electrons in the outermost shells of the atom. This electron could be manipulated and read out through the needle of a scanning tunneling microscope. The research offers prospects for storing quantum information inside the nucleus, where it is safe from external disturbances.

The team studied a single titanium atom - a Ti-47 atom, that has one neutron less than the naturally abundant Ti-48, which makes the nucleus slightly magnetic. This magnetism, or the 'spin', can be seen as a sort of compass needle that can point in various directions. The orientation of the spin at a given time constitutes a piece of quantum information.

Researchers from Monash University, part of the FLEET Centre, and China's Weifang University, have reported a generic approach towards intrinsic magnetic second-order topological insulators - materials that can be beneficial for spintronics.

Two-dimensional ferromagnetic semiconductors, such as CrI₃, Cr₂Ge₂Te₆, and VI₃, have been extensively studied in recent years and are fundamental to spintronics. Topological insulators are materials with unique properties where the interior is insulating, but the boundary can conduct electrons. In three-dimensional topological insulators like Bi₂Se₃, the surface hosts two-dimensional Dirac fermions. Second-order topological insulators, a new concept extending the idea of topological insulators, exhibit (m-2)-dimensional boundary states in m-dimensional materials, such as one-dimensional hinge states in three-dimensional materials and zero-dimensional corner states in two-dimensional materials.

Researchers at CIC nanoGUNE BRTA, Charles University in Prague and IKERBASQUE have designed a new complex material with unique properties that could be beneficial for spintronics.

Twist engineering has emerged as a fascinating approach for modulating electronic properties in van der Waals heterostructures. While theoretical works have predicted the modulation of spin texture in graphene-based heterostructures by twist angle, experimental studies are lacking. In this recent work, by performing spin precession experiments, the team demonstrates tunability of the spin texture and associated spin–charge interconversion with twist angle in WSe₂/graphene heterostructures.

Researchers use ultrashort laser pulses to trigger a spin-aligned electron flow on the few-femtosecond timescale—opening up a possible path toward faster spintronic devices.

Spintronics technology requires a rapid, controlled way to create spin currents. To that end, the researchers have demonstrated that short laser pulses can create spin currents within a few femtoseconds (10–15 s) — about 30 times faster than previous techniques. The method, they believe, should provide a more flexible and precise way to generate spin currents by taking advantage of the control that physicists have over laser light.

Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and Khalifa University of Science and Technology have investigated the transmission, tunneling magnetoresistance ratio and spin injection efficiency of bilayer LaI₂ using a combination of first-principles calculations and the non-equilibrium Green’s function method. 

Multilayer graphene electrodes were used by the team, to build a magnetic tunnel junction with bilayer LaI₂ as ferromagnetic barrier. The magnetic tunnel junction reportedly proved to be a perfect spin filter device with an impressive tunneling magnetoresistance ratio of 653% under a bias of 0.1 V and a still excellent performance in a wide bias range. The team said that in combination with the obtained high spin injection efficiency, this could hold great potential from an application point of view.