October 2011

Researchers from the Physical and Technical Institute in Braunschweig, Germany have discovered that waste heat can be used inside magnetic tunnel structures (such as those used in MRAM chips). This means that such structures may be used to monitor and control "thermoelectric voltages" and currents in highly integrated electronic circuits.

In their experiments, the scientists generated a temperature difference between the two magnetic layers and investigated the electric voltage (or "thermoelectric voltage") generated hereby. It turned out that the thermoelectric voltage depends on the magnetic orientation of the two layers nearly as strongly as the electric resistance. By switching the magnetization, it is therefore possible to control the thermoelectric voltage and, ultimately, also the thermal current flowing through the specimen.

New South Wales university (UNSW) announced that they completed and installed their new $1 million Vector Field Facility (VFF) equipment (which took them 5 years to develop and make). This is the world's largest cryogen-free vector magnet system. The VFF will be used to study and develop spintronic and quantum devices, quantum dots, self-assembled nanowires and more.

The VFF can enable very low temperature (0.01 degrees above absolute zero) and apply magnetic fields in any direction.

Researchers from the RIKEN Institute in Japan have shown that the semiconducting material BiTeI could be useful to overcome the weak coupling of electron spin to electrical currents in Spintronics devices.

In spintronic devices, it is difficult to control the up and down spins independently because of the electron energy degeneracy. One way to split the energy of the two spin states is to destroy the symmetry of the atomic lattice at a surface or at the interface between two materials. This is known as the Rashba effect. The new research have experimentally shown a Rashba-type effect in 3D (or bulk) BiTeI.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder (CU) developed a new chip that uses microfluidics and magnetic switches to trap and transport magnetic beads. This low-power device may be useful for medical devices. This technology may also lead us towards "MRAM" chips used for molecular and cellular manipulation.

In the past, magnetic particle transport chips required continuous power and even cooling. This new technology manages to overcome the power and heat issues, and offers random-access two-dimensional control and non-volatile memory. The prototype chip uses 12 spin valves (commonly used as magnetic sensors in HD read heads) which are optimized for magnetic trapping. Pulses of electric current are used to switch individual spin valve magnets “on” to trap a bead, or “off” to release it, and thereby move the bead down a ladder formed by the two lines. The beads start out suspended in salt water above the valves before being trapped in the array.

Researchers from Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a new custom-made material that enabled them to performs measurements important for the emerging field of oxide spintronics.

The team engineered a highly ordered version of a magnetic oxide compound that naturally has two randomly distributed elements: lanthanum and strontium. The team members from ANL have mastered a technique for laying down the oxides one atomic layer at a time, allowing them to construct an exceptionally organized lattice in which each layer contains only strontium or lanthanum, so that the interface between the two components could be studied.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) granted a four-year $1.85 million research project to UC Riverside researchers - to develop spin-based memory and logic chip. The researchers are working towards a magnetologic gate that will serve as the engine for the new technology - similar to the role of the transistor in conventional electronics.

The magnetic gate consists of graphene contacted by several magnetic electrodes. Data is stored in the magnetic state of the electrodes, similar to the way data is stored in a magnetic hard drive. For the logic operations, electrons move through the graphene and use its spin state to compare the information held in the individual magnetic electrodes.