Latest Spintronics Stories

Study paves way for development of nanocircuits for energy, electronics applicationsScientists have discovered the world's smallest superconductor, a sheet of four pairs of molecules less than one nanometer wide. The Ohio University-led study, published today as an advance online publication in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, provides the first evidence that nanoscale molecular superconducting wires can be fabricated, which could be used for nanoscale electronic devices and energy...

UCLA team couples quantum dots, silicon for room-temperature functionalityAs the electronics industry works toward developing smaller and more compact devices, the need to create new types of scaled-down semiconductors that are more efficient and use less power has become essential.In a study to be published in the April issue of Nature Materials (currently available online), researchers from UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science describe the creation of a new...

Controlling structure on the nanoscale could lead to better superconductorsSuperconductors, materials in which current flows without resistance, have tantalizing applications. But even the highest-temperature superconductors require extreme cooling before the effect kicks in, so researchers want to know when and how superconductivity comes about in order to coax it into existence at room temperature. Now a team has shown that, in a copper-based superconductor, tiny areas of weak...

Princeton engineers have made a breakthrough in an 80-year-old quandary in quantum physics, paving the way for the development of new materials that could make electronic devices smaller and cars more energy efficient.By reworking a theory first proposed by physicists in the 1920s, the researchers discovered a new way to predict important characteristics of a new material before it's been created. The new formula allows computers to model the properties of a material up to 100,000 times...

Brown University physicist Vesna Mitrovic and colleagues at Brown and in France have discovered magnetic waves that fluctuate when exposed to certain conditions in a superconducting material. The discovery may help scientists understand more fully the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity at the quantum level. Results are published in Physical Review Letters.At the quantum level, the forces of magnetism and superconductivity exist in an uneasy relationship. Superconducting...

Physicists at JILA have for the first time observed chemical reactions near absolute zero, demonstrating that chemistry is possible at ultralow temperatures and that reaction rates can be controlled using quantum mechanics, the peculiar rules of submicroscopic physics.The new results and techniques, described in the Feb. 12 issue of Science,* will help scientists understand previously unknown aspects of how molecules interact, a key to advancing biology, creating new materials, producing...

Just as the heartbeats of today's electronic devices depend on the ability to switch the flow of electricity in semiconductors on and off with lightning speed, the viability of the "spintronic" devices of the future -- technologies that manipulate both the flow and magnetic "spin" of electrons -- will require similarly precise control over semiconductor magnetism.Achievement of this goal necessitates a detailed understanding of what happens at the exact transition point...

A major hurdle in the ambitious quest to design and construct a radically new kind of quantum computer has been finding a way to manipulate the single electrons that very likely will constitute the new machines' processing components or "qubits."Princeton University's Jason Petta has discovered how to do just that -- demonstrating a method that alters the properties of a lone electron without disturbing the trillions of electrons in its immediate surroundings. The feat is essential...

Research Superiority Award to Enable Recruitment of Stellar Faculty, Formally Establish Applied Research Hub at Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH-ARH) HOUSTON, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The University of Houston has received a Research Superiority Award from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF), announced today by Gov. Rick Perry on behalf of the ETF board. The University of Houston's Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH) will receive $3.5 million over a five-year...

Electric control of aligned Spins improves Computer MemoryResearchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the French research facility CNRS, south of Paris, are using electric fields to manipulate the property of electrons known as "spin" to store data permanently. This principle could not only improve random access memory in computers, it could also revolutionize the next generation of electronic devices.This new kind of memory exploits a phenomenon called "tunnel...