October 2008

Grandis announced that it has been awarded $6.0 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the initial phase of research to develop spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) chips (for the 45 nm technology node and beyond). The total value of the effort, if all phases of the development program are completed, could be up to $14.7 million over four years.

French startup Spin-Transfer-Technologies has developed a unique approach to MRAM (magnetic memory). Their OST-MRAM (Orthogonal Spin Transfer MRAM) technology is faster, and more power efficient than regular STT-RAM tech

Physicists in the US are the first to segregate a Fermi gas of ultracold atoms according to their spin — with “spin-up” and “spin-down” atoms moving to opposite sides of the optical trap in which they were contained.

John Thomas and colleagues at Duke University found that about 60% of the lithium-6 atoms became segregated and that the spin-up and spin-down atoms remained apart for several seconds. However, they are puzzled as to why the segregation lasts much longer, and is more intense, than predicted by theory.

In his lab in one of the more venerable buildings at Berkeley Lab, Schenkel and his students have used a focused ion beam to implant single ions in devices mere millionths of a meter square. (An ion is an atom with net charge, typically lacking one or more electrons.)

"Single-atom effects have been observed before, but the yields are so low as to be impractical -- or the devices are randomly formed, with no control or predictability," Schenkel says. "Our approach to single-atom doping integrates ion beams with a modified scanning force microscope. We use the microscope's cantilever tip for both the nondestructive imaging of the target area and to position the ion beam."

The device has the advantage of using virtually any species of atoms, says Schenkel. "We can start with any source of neutral atoms, such as phosphorus or antimony -- manganese is fashionable right now -- and choose one of a number of different sources to ionize them."

The low-energy focused ion beam is sent through a hole in the microscope's cantilever. "The hole in the tip acts as a tiny aperture or mask," says Schenkel. "We've demonstrated holes with diameters as small as five nanometers" -- five billionths of a meter.

To confirm that an ion has been implanted in the silicon, the region is fitted with electrodes to form a transistor channel, placed under a bias voltage. Then the implantation of a single ion -- even in a target area as large as two micrometers on a side (two millionths of a meter) -- can be detected as a change in the resistance of the channel current. Schenkel compares the current to electrons sliding down a hill; the presence of an implanted ion, he says, "is a bump in the way -- it impedes the electron flow."

Says Schenkel, "The method is so sensitive that single-ion hits can be detected at room temperature in a device as large as four square microns. Inside that region we can form numerous single-atom devices, each with dimensions less than 100 nanometers." Before making a specific transistor or other device, single-ion implantation can be "practiced" with atoms of a noble gas that do not dope the substrate. "We wait until the transistor settles down, then switch to the species we want."

Total revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2009 increased 14% to $5.73 million from $5.00 million in the prior-year quarter. The revenue increase was due to a 13% increase in product sales and a 24% increase in contract research and development revenue. Net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2009 increased 40% to $2.30 million, or $0.48 per diluted share, compared to $1.64 million, or $0.34 per diluted share, for the prior-year quarter.

For the first six months of fiscal 2009, total revenue increased 9% to $10.6 million from $9.71 million for the first six months of fiscal 2008. The revenue increase was primarily due to a 10% increase in product sales to $9.42 million for the first half of fiscal 2009 from $8.58 million for the prior-year period. Net income for the first half of fiscal 2009 was $4.20 million, or $0.88 per diluted share compared to $3.23 million, or $0.67 per diluted share, for the first half of fiscal 2008.

"We are pleased with our strong quarterly results,'' said NVE President and Chief Executive Officer Daniel A. Baker, Ph.D. "Increases in product sales and contract research and development revenue drove record earnings.''

NVE is a leader in the practical commercialization of spintronics, a nanotechnology that relies on electron spin rather than electron charge to acquire, store and transmit information. The company manufactures high-performance spintronic products including sensors and couplers that are used to acquire and transmit data. NVE has also licensed its spintronic magnetoresistive random access memory technology, commonly known as MRAM.

A research team at Singapore A*STAR's Data Storage Institute (DSI) has invented a new phase change material that has the potential to change the design of future memory storage devices.

Phase change materials are substances that are capable of changing their structure between amorphous and crystalline at high speed. Currently, these materials are used to make Phase change memory (PCM), the most promising alternative to replace FLASH memory.

Eiji Saitoh of KeioUniversity in Yokohama, Japan, and his collaborators found that heating one side of a magnetized nickel-iron rod changes the arrangement of the electrons in the material according to their spins. These spins are the quantum-physics analogs of the south-north magnetic axes in bar magnets.

In the heated rod, electrons with spins that are aligned “up,” or with the material’s magnetic field, tend to prefer the warmer side, while those with spins pointing in the opposite direction, or “down,” tend to prefer the cooler side, the researchers report in the Oct. 9 Nature.

Engineers could harness this spin effect to design new devices for computer chips, Saitoh says. For example, a spintronic battery could produce spin imbalances at its two electrodes, and the chip could use that imbalance, instead of an ordinary electric current, and store information magnetically. Electric currents produce heat, but transferring information by flipping spins does not. Such spintronics devices would then cut down power consumption and operate at faster speeds without overheating.

Providing a glimpse into the infinitesimal, physicists have found a novel way of spying on some of the universe's tiniest building blocks.

Their "camera," described this week in the journal Nature, consists of a special "flaw" in diamonds that can be manipulated into sensitively monitoring magnetic signals from individual electrons and atomic nuclei placed nearby.

The new work represents a dramatic sharpening of the basic approach used in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which ascertain chemical structures and image inside human bodies by scanning the magnetic activity of billions of individual nuclei. The new diamond-based magnetic sensor could enable novel forms of imaging, marrying NMR's noninvasive nature with atomic-scale spatial resolution, potentially benefiting fields ranging from materials science, spintronics, and quantum information to structural biology, neuroscience, and biomedicine.

Read more here (EurekAlert)

Armed with nearly $11 million in National Science Foundation funding, Ohio State University will work over the next several years to develop a research center to explore the next step in high-tech electronics.

Ohio State's centre will focus on manipulating materials such as plastic, silicon and semiconductors and researching in the field of “magnetoelectronics,” also called “spintronics.” The field involves the spin of electrons in atoms and how that can lead to better and faster computer technology.