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Spintronics

Spintronics is an emerging technology that uses the intrinsic spin of electrons in addition to their charge to carry and store information. This allows for greater storage density, lower power consumption, and faster operation compared to conventional electronics. Some advantages of spintronics include non-volatile memory since electron spin is not dependent on energy, and lower energy needed to switch spin states compared to charging capacitors. Multiferroic materials that exhibit both ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity are promising for spintronic devices as the magnetic and electric properties can be coupled, allowing the polarization to be switched by a magnetic field or vice versa. This could enable novel memory devices with improved writing/reading speeds and reduced energy usage.

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21 views

Spintronics

Spintronics is an emerging technology that uses the intrinsic spin of electrons in addition to their charge to carry and store information. This allows for greater storage density, lower power consumption, and faster operation compared to conventional electronics. Some advantages of spintronics include non-volatile memory since electron spin is not dependent on energy, and lower energy needed to switch spin states compared to charging capacitors. Multiferroic materials that exhibit both ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity are promising for spintronic devices as the magnetic and electric properties can be coupled, allowing the polarization to be switched by a magnetic field or vice versa. This could enable novel memory devices with improved writing/reading speeds and reduced energy usage.

Uploaded by

anaghp230018cy
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Spintronics

An electron has two fundamental degrees of freedom, namely charge and spin. Conventional
electronic devices use only the charge of an electron for information processing using binary
bits ( -1,0). Spintronics is an alternative technology, that makes use of the fundamental spin
of electron along with the charge, to carry and store information. The shift from conventional
electronics to spintronics technology opens a wide range of possibilities to construct devices
which have greater storage density, lesser power consumption, fast operation and also devices
that are cheap and versatile.

Advantages of spintronics over the conventional electronics: The Random-access memory


(RAM) that is used in conventional electronics is volatile, i.e., the information is lost when
the power (electricity) is cutoff. In case of spintronics, the spin of an electron is not energy-
dependent so that the information remains fixed even when the power is cutoff. Also, the
capacitors that are used in the conventional electronics needs to be constantly recharged
(consume more energy) as the charge keeps leaking out. On contrast, less amount of energy is
required to switch the spin states from 0 to 1 or vice versa, and hence spintronics devices
requires lesser amount of power. Overall, it may be concluded that the functionality, speed,
storage, and consumption of power will be highly enhanced in the spintronics.

The property of a material to change its electrical resistance when an external magnetic field
is applied to it is called Magneto Resistance. Spintronics came into light with the discovery of
Giant Magneto Resistance (GMR). GMR is almost 200 times stronger than the normal
Magneto Resistance. Similar to other magneto resistive effects, the giant magnetoresistance
(GMR) can be also defined as the change in electrical resistance of a materials with response
to an applied magnetic field. It is found out that on applying magnetic field to a magnetic
metallic multilayer (e.g., Fe/Cr and Co/Cu) in which the ferromagnetic layers are separated
by the nonmagnetic spacer layers, which are few nanometres thick, resulted in a significant
reduce in the electrical resistance of the multilayer.
Properties of Spintronics Materials: While discussing spintronics technology, major
properties such as ferromagnetism, semiconducting, and ferroelectricity are to be
explained.

When dealing with spintronics-based magnetic semiconductor, the ferromagnetism is a


crucial behaviour to be discussed. Ferromagnetism is defined as the mechanism through
which a specific materials (like iron) form permanent magnets or are attracted to magnets.
Ferromagnetism is based on the fact that all electrons possess a spin; every electron is
considered as a tiny magnet with either an up or a down spin. Ferromagnetism is possible
only if the electrons are arranged in the lattice and are aligned in the same direction, ↑↑↑↑↑ to
each other. The parallel alignment of the electrons results in a large net magnetization even
when the magnetic field is absent.

Semiconducting Properties Semiconductor either a solid chemical element or a compound


that has conductivity in between that of the insulator (e.g., glass) and that of most metals.
Also, the semiconductors have a moderate band gap in between that of insulators (which have
a very high band gap) and metals which have its valence band and conduction band overlap.
The semiconductor material has ability to allow electric current to pass through it under
certain circumstances but not others, thus making a good choice to control the flow of the
current in electronic circuits. They can also exhibit other useful properties like passing
electric current more easily in particular directions than the other, exhibiting variable
resistance and sensitivity to electromagnetic waves or heat.

Ferroelectricity can be defined as the ability of certain materials such as BaTiO3, PbTiO3 to
have a spontaneous electric polarization, the polarization can be reversed by applying an
external electric field. A large number of electronic devices such as capacitors, ferroelectric
random-access memory etc. are made from ferroelectric materials.

Combining the ferroelectricity with the ferromagnetism results in multiferroic materials


which are highly candidate to spintronic technology
Ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism integration-based memory devices.
(Source: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10948-020-05545-8)

Spintronics Based on Multiferroics Materials: Multiferroics are materials in which more


than one ferroic orders such as ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, and ferro elasticity exist at
the same time. Related to spintronics, the magnetoelectric multiferroic materials are of the
greatest interest due to their ability to exhibit ferromagnetism-ferroelectricity properties
instantaneously. In such materials, the coupling between the two ferroics are important; the
polarization can be switched by a magnetic field and the magnetization by the electric field.
Many devices were produced based on these properties (ferromagnetism or ferroelectricity)
individually. As separated properties, in the magnetic random-access memory (MRAM)
device, the data writing is done by converting the magnetic states (i.e., spin up or spin down
states) by using a magnetic field, while the stored data is read by using magnetoresistance
effect. The ferromagnetic materials used in the magnetic random-access memory (MRAM)
consumes large amount of energy. With integration; we get, memory devices with versatile
functionalities of both MRAM and FeRAM and would capably improve the writing and
reading speeds and also reduce energy consumption.
References

1. Saad Mabrouk Yakout; Spintronics: Future Technology for New Data Storage and
Communication Devices; Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism (2020)
2. Priti J. Rajput, Sheetal U. Bhandari, Girish Wadhwa; A Review on—Spintronics
an Emerging Technology; Silicon (2022)
3. Vineeth Kartha ; Spintronics and Spintronic Devices (2011)

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