September 2011

Update: Unfortunately, Hideo Ohno did not get the Nobel, which went to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, Adam G. Riess

According to Thomson Reuters a Spintronics researcher is a likely likely to be in contention for Nobel honors in Physics. They say that Hideo Ohno, Professor of the Laboratory for Nanoelectronics and Spintronics in Tohuku University is Japan may get the price for his contributions to ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductors.

Researchers from Japan managed to induce and control magnetization in a ferromagnetic semiconductor (cobalt-doped titanium dioxide) at room temperature. This is another step towards room-temperature Spintronics.

The researchers constructed an electric double-layer transistor structure (see above) which uses a liquid electrolyte as a gate insulator, in which a small applied voltage is sufficient to generate a very high electric field.

A few weeks ago we reported about research from Virginia Commonwealth University - an integrated circuit using spintronics and straintronics. The new IC design uses very little energy - in fact it could run merely by tapping the ambient energy from the environment. Today we learn that the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $1.5 million to this research, in a 4 year grant (from September 2011 to August 2015).

According to the NSF, this project will:

• develop all the modeling tools necessary to simulate these devices and their switching dynamics. They will incorporate the effects of device and circuit stochasticity and thermal fluctuations via appropriate models such as stochastic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equations and/or Fokker-Planck equations.
• Demonstrate Bennett clocking and successful logic bit propagation in a digital gate array fabricated with nanolithography, where clocking is carried out with tiny voltages generating strain
• Design energy-efficient neuromorphic architectures based on multi-state hybrid spintronic/straintronic synapses and neurons that can process analog signals
• Demonstrate image processing with straintronic/spintronic nodes communicating via spin waves to implement specific image morphing algorithms. These image processors will be extremely fast since they will rely on the physics of magnetic interactions between spin wave circuits and the collective activity of multiferroic magnetic cells to elicit the required functionality, without requiring any software or execution of instruction sets.

RIKEN researchers have developed a new lateral spin-valve with an improved interface properties - which significantly improves the efficiency of the spin injection and the spin valve voltage. In lateral spin valves, the spin transport occurs parallel to the layers. These valves are useful because they enable the generation of pure spin currents.

The researchers used NiFe/MgO/Ag junctions (MgO sandwiched between ferromagnetic electrodes of NiFe and silver). These junctions were annealed in nitrogen and hydrogen, which improves the spin injection efficiency and reduces the junction resistance.

The University of Utah announced a new $21.5 million basic research center aimed towards "next-generation materials for plasmonics and spintronics". The new "Center of Excellence in Materials Research and Innovation" will be funded by the National Science Foundation ($12.5 million), the Utah Science Technology and Research ($6.5 million) initiative and the University of Utah ($3 million).

The spintronics team wil be lead by Physicist Brian Saam. The research effort will center on developing organic spintronic semiconductors.

A new study managed to see the showed that barium titanate (BaTiO3) exhibits a multiferroic property (dual traits of both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic) at room temperature using soft X-ray resonant magnetic scattering. The EU-funded project was led by researchers from Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

This unique property of BaTiO3 could be used to make spintronic devices - quickly and cost effectively. The EU's ELISA (European light sources activities - synchrotrons and free electron lasers) project granted 10 million euro to the project, and the FEMMES (FerroElectric Multifunctional tunnel junctions for MEmristors and Spintronics) project contributed a further 2 million euro.