SCMR effect simplifies the design of fundamental spintronic components
The transition from light bulbs to LEDs has drastically cut the amount of electricity we use for lighting. Most of the electricity consumed by incandescent bulbs was, after all, dissipated as heat. We may now be on the verge of a comparable breakthrough in electronic computer components. Up to now, these have been run on electricity, generating unwanted heat. If spin current were employed instead, computers and similar devices could be operated in a much more energy-efficient manner. Dr. Olena Gomonay from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany and her team together with Professor Eiji Saitoh from the Advanced Institute for Materials Research (AIMR) at Tohoku University in Japan and his work group have now discovered an effect that could make such a transition to spin current a reality. This effect significantly simplifies the design of fundamental spintronic components.
Touching a computer that has been running for some time, you will feel heat. This heat is an – undesirable – side effect of the electric current. Undesirable because the heat generated, naturally, also consumes energy. We are all familiar with this effect from light bulbs, which became so hot after being on for hours that they could burn your fingers. This is because light bulbs converted only a fraction of the energy required to do their job of creating light. The energy used by LEDs, on the other hand, is almost completely used for lighting, which is why they don’t become hot. This makes LEDs significantly more energy-efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs.
Instead of using an electric current composed of charged particles, a computer using a stream of particles with a spin other than zero could manipulate the material of its components in the same way to perform calculations. The primary difference is that no heat is generated, the processes are much more energy-efficient. Dr. Olena Gomonay from Mainz University and Professor Eiji Saitoh from Tohoku University have now laid the foundations for using these spin currents. More precisely, they have used the concept of spin currents and applied it to a specific material. Gomonay compares the spin currents involved with how our brains work: “Our brains process immeasurable amounts of information, but they don’t heat up in the process. Nature is, therefore, way ahead of us.” The team from Mainz is hoping to emulate this model.
Drastic change in current flow
How well spin currents flow depends on the material – just like in the case of electric current. While spin currents can always flow in ferromagnetic materials, in antiferromagnetic materials states with low resistance alternate with those with high resistance. “We have now found a way to control spin currents by means of a magnetic field and temperature, in other words, to control the resistance of an antiferromagnetic system based on spin,” explained Gomonay, summarizing her results.
At a temperature close to the phase transition temperature, Gomonay and her team applied a small magnetic field to the material. While the applied magnetic field alters the orientation of the spin currents to allow them to be easily transported through the material, the temperature has precisely two effects. On the one hand, a higher temperature causes more particles of the material to be in excited states, meaning there are more spin carriers that can be transported, which makes spin transport easier. On the other hand, the high temperature makes it possible to operate at a low magnetic field.
Thus the resistance and the current flow change drastically by several orders of magnitude. “This effect, which we call spin colossal magnetoresistance or SCMR for short, has the potential to simplify the design of fundamental spintronic components significantly,” explained the scientist from Mainz. This is particularly interesting for storage devices such as hard disks. This effect might be employed, for example, to create spin current switches as well as spin current based storage media.
Learn more:Â Energy-efficient spin current can be controlled by magnetic field and temperature
The Latest on: Spintronics
[google_news title=”” keyword=”spintronics” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Spintronics
- Molecular electronics: what will future gadgets be like?on April 26, 2024 at 6:58 am
The discovery that won the latest Nobel Prize in physics seems far away from our life, but one day everything could change with the arrival of molecular gadgets. We've tried to look into the future.
- A Paradigm Shift in RAM Is About to Make Computing Unstoppableon April 24, 2024 at 5:30 am
For more than two decades, the most advanced version of this technology—magnetoresistive RAM, or MRAM—has been the go-to tech for the kind of intense computing necessary in industrial, military, and ...
- Here’s Everything You Need To Know About Spintronicson April 23, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Spintronics, also known as spin electronics, is a rapidly developing field that explores the potential of utilising the spin of electrons in solid-state devices. Spin is one of the three ...
- Unlocking spin current secrets: A new milestone in spintronicson April 23, 2024 at 2:55 pm
Using neutron scattering and voltage measurements, a group of researchers have discovered that a material's magnetic properties can predict spin current changes with temperature. The finding is a ...
- Spintronics research shows material's magnetic properties can predict how a spin current changes with temperatureon April 23, 2024 at 10:11 am
Spintronics is a field garnering immense attention for its range of potential advantages for conventional electronics. These include reducing power consumption, high-speed operation, non-volatility, ...
- A new spin on materials analysis: Benefits of probing electron spin states at much higher resolution and efficiencyon April 17, 2024 at 12:45 pm
Electron spin states can now be probed at much higher resolution and more efficiently, opening new opportunities in materials analysis and data processing technologies.
- Spintronics: A new path to room temperature swirling spin textureson April 17, 2024 at 10:10 am
In some materials, spins form complex magnetic structures within the nanometer and micrometer scale in which the magnetization direction twists and curls along specific directions. Examples of such ...
- Spintronics: A new path to room temperature swirling spin textureson April 16, 2024 at 5:01 pm
Examples of such structures are magnetic bubbles, skyrmions, and magnetic vortices. Spintronics aims to make use of such tiny magnetic structures to store data or perform logic operations with ...
- Transporting spin information at the speed of lighton April 2, 2024 at 4:59 pm
The breakthrough, described in a study published March 27 in Nature, involves the field of spintronics, which aims to manipulate the spin of electrons in order to store and process information. The ...
via Bing News