Here's a video explaining the Masafumi Shirai Laboratory at Tohoku University?theoretical research on electrical conductivity in magnetoresistive devices. The aim is to achieve very functional spintronics devices using highly spin-polarized materials:
Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong managed to generate a spin current in Graphene, which could lead us to using Graphene as a spintronics device.
The scientists used spin splitting in monolayer graphene generated by ferromagnetic proximity effect and adiabatic (a process that is slow compared to the speed of the electrons in the device) quantum pumping. They can control the degree of polarization of the spin current by varying the Fermi energy (the level in the distribution of electron energies in a solid at which a quantum state is equally likely to be occupied or empty), which they say is very important for meeting various application requirements.
Reserchers from Keio University and Oxford University have successfully generated and detected quantum entanglement between electron spin and nuclear spin in phosphorus impurities added to silicon. This is the world's first successful generation and detection of entanglement, which is essential for quantum computing, in silicon, which is used as a semiconductor in all computers. This accomplishment constitutes a major breakthrough toward the achievement of quantum computers.
Hitachi says they will double their R&D activities outside Japan - adding around 150 to 300 employees in the next fiscal year. As part of that effort, Hitachi will straighten its Spintronics research, in the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory.
Researchers from the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory in the University of Cambridge developed a new technology that enables the control (and detection) of spin current. The idea is to use laser light to sustain the spin signal during transit and to manipulate it by applying a voltage. The detection is done electrically.
The team admits that for high-volume information processing this will not really be practical, but this method proves the spin-transistor principle and it be lay the ground work for next-generation devices.