Spintronics

What is Spintronics?
Spintronics or spin electronics is the study of the role that is played by the spin of an electron
in the solid state physics and other devices that exploit spin properties. Spintronics is also
known as spin Flextronics is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electrons and its
associated magnetic moment, in addition to fundamental electronic charge in solid state
devices. For example, spin transport and spin relaxation in semiconductors and metals are
important solid state physics issues which are included in the fundamental research along
with new technology being implemented in the electronic storage technology.

Spintronics helped in creating a prototype device which used in industry as a read head and a
memory-storage cell is the giant-magneto resistive (GMR) sandwich structure which
consists of alternating ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic metal layers. Depending on the
relative orientation of the magnetizations in the magnetic layers, the device resistance
changes from small (parallel magnetizations) to large (antiparallel magnetizations).
This change in resistance (also called magnetoresistance) is used to sense changes in
magnetic fieldsElectron spin can be identified as a magnetic field having one of two
positions, known as up and down. This gives an extra two binary states to the conventional
high and low logic values, which are represented by simple currents. When the spin state is
added to the mix, a bit can have four possible states, which can be called as up-high, up-low,
down-high and down- low. These four states represent quantum bits or qubits.
Applications of Spintronics
Some spintronics applications are given below:

 Spintronic devices are used in the field of mass-storage devices. It is used to compress
massive amounts of data into a small area, as an instance, approximately one trillion
 bits per square inch (1.5 Gbit/mm²) or roughly 1 TB data can be stored on a single
sided 3.5″ diameter disc.
 Spintronics is also used in the medical field to detect cancer.
 Spintronic technology in general holds promises for digital electronics. It has been
tested in mass-storage components namely hard drives.
Future Works in Spintonics

 Creation of spin polarization through optical or magnetic injection

 Spin-polarized Transport through semiconductor/superconductor interfaces
 Spin relaxation in metals and semiconductors
 Spin-based devices such as PN junctions and amplifiers
 Spin-based quantum computation and electron entanglement in
different semiconductor devices