The ebook FEEE - Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and Electronics is based on material originally written by T.R. Kuphaldt and various co-authors. For more information please read the copyright pages.



Spintronics

Conventional semiconductors control the flow of electron charge, current. Digital states are represented by “on” or “off” flow of current. As semiconductors become more dense with the move to smaller geometry, the power that must be dissipated as heat increases to the point that it is difficult to remove. Electrons have properties other than charge such as spin. A tentative explanation of electron spin is the rotation of distributed electron charge about the spin axis, analogous to diurnal rotation of the Earth. The loops of current created by charge movement, form a magnetic field. However, the electron is more like a point charge than a distributed charge, Thus, the rotating distributed charge analogy is not a correct explanation of spin. Electron spin may have one of two states: up or down which may represent digital states. More precisely the spin quantum number (ms) may be ±1/2 the angular momentum quantum number (l).

Controlling electron spin instead of charge flow considerably reduces power dissipation and increases switching speed. Spintronics, an acronym for SPIN TRansport electrONICS, is not widely applied because of the difficulty of generating, controlling, and sensing electron spin. However, high density, non-volatile magnetic spin memory is in production using modified semiconductor processes. This is related to the spin valve magnetic read head used in computer harddisk drives, not mentioned further here.



Last Update: 2010-11-19