What is Spintronics (Magnetoelectronics, Spin Electronics, or Spin-based Electronics)?
The age of electrically-based devices has been with us for more than six decades. With more and more electrical devices being packed into smaller and smaller spaces, the limits of physical space will prevent further expansion in the direction the microelectronics industry is currently going. Also, volatile memory, which does not retain information upon being powered off, is significantly hindering ultrafast computing speeds. However, a new breed of electronics, dubbed “spintronics,” may change all of that. Instead of solely relying on the electron’s negative charge to manipulate electron motion or to store information, spintronic devices would further rely on the electron’s spin degree of freedom, the mathematics of which is similar to that of a spinning top. Since an electron’s spin is directly coupled to its magnetic moment, its manipulation is intimately related to applying external magnetic fields. The advantage of spin-based electronics is that they are very nonvolatile compared t
