December 2011

In the holidays and end-of-the-year spirit, here are the top 10 stories posted on Spintronics-Info in 2011, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. Dilute ferromagnetic oxide materials can be used in spintronic devices (Apr 24)
2. Electron spin-splitting (Rashba effect) shown in Bismuth selenide (Aug 21)
3. AMSC (MEMS and Spintronics company) on its way to the NASDAQ (Jun 20)
4. Electrical conductivity in magnetoresistive devices (Jan 31)
5. KEIO Spintronics Research Center introduction video (Feb 4)
6. High temperature electrical injection, detection and precession of spin accumulation in silicon (May 6)
7. David Awschalom: "Spintronics, Abandoning Perfection for the Quantum Age" (Feb 21)
8. Researchers develop new room-temperature Spintronic transistors (Mar 23)
9. DNA molecules can detect spin (Apr 1)
10. Atomtronics could be more powerful than electronics or spintronics (Mar 1)

Here's for an awesome 2012. May you all enjoy the holidays!

Tohoku University and Tokyo Electron announced that they will jointly develop Spintronics memory integration and manufacturing technology. Professor Tetsuo Endoh from Tohoku's Center for Spintronics Integrated Systems (CSIS) will lead the research. The aim of this project is to present a miniature highly-integrated Spintronics memory device and the process technologies needed to commercially manufacture it.

The CSIS is considered one of the world's leaders in Spintronics memory, and will contribute its magnetic material technologies, device technologies and design technologies. TEL will contribute process and equipment technologies. The video above shows the Spintronics IC work done at the CSIS.

MIT researchers showed that laser can be used to observe electrons spin and even control the electrons movement using polarization. This could lead to a very fast spintronics devices.

The team devised a method that can provide a detailed three-dimensional mapping of the electron energy, momentum and spin states all at once. They did this by using short, intense pulses of circularly polarized laser light whose time of travel can be precisely measured. Using this method they were able to image how the spin and motion are related, for electrons travelling in all different directions and with different momenta, all in a fraction of the time it would take using alternative methods.