Spintronics

Article By:

Treger, Daryl Strategic Analysis, Inc., Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Wolf, Stuart A Institute for Nanoscale and Quantum Scientific and Technological Advanced Research, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.

Last reviewed:January 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.803560

The branch of physics concerned with the manipulation, storage, and transfer of information by means of electron spins in addition to or in place of the electron charge as in conventional electronics. Introduced in 1996, spintronics (the word coined by S. Wolf) was originally the name for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program managed by Wolf. In conventional electronics, only the charge of the electrons is of consequence for device operation, but using the electron's other fundamental property, its spin, has opened up the new field of spintronics. Major advances in electron spin transport started in 1979–1980 with the discovery of large low-temperature magnetoresistance in metallic superlattices. Later demonstrations of the “giant” effect at room temperature evolved toward application in practical devices.

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