What is Spintronics/Spin-electronics ?

What is Spintronics/Spin-electronics ?:
SPINTRONICS

Spintronics is the area of condensed-matter physics that studies the properties of the electron spin, with a view to improve the efficiency of electronic devices and to enrich them with new functionalities.

In this we study about the possible devices that specifically exploit spin properties instead of or in addition to charge degrees of freedom.
Spintronics is the interface between magnetism and electronics. Spintronics is also called magnetoelectronics, spin electronics, or spin?based electronics.
The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling.The spin is a purely quantum-mechanical entity and its interaction with the electron charge or the atomic environment provides a unique opportunity to understand the quantum nature of matter.
The prototype device that is already in use in industry as a read head and a memory-storage cell is the giant-magnetoresistive (GMR) sandwich structure which consists of alternating ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic metal layers is based on this principle.

Quantum computing may be possible one day with spintronic devices.



SOME FACTS ABOUT SPINTRONICS

(1) Information is stored (written) into spins as a particular spin orientation (up or down),

(2) The spins, being attached to mobile electrons, carry the information along a wire.

(3) The information is read at a terminal.
Spin orientation of conduction electrons survives for a relatively long time (nanoseconds, compared to tens of femtoseconds during which electron momentum decays), which makes spintronic devices particularly attractive for memory storage and magnetic sensors applications, and, potentially for quantum computing where electron spin would represent a bit called qubit of information.
Currently the spintronics research effort in focuses on the following directions:
1)Creation of spin polarization through optical or magnetic injection.

2)Spin polarized Transport through semiconductor/superconductor interfaces.

3)Spin relaxation in metals and semiconductors.

4)Spin-based devices such as pn junctions and amplifiers.

5)Spin-based quantum computation and electron entanglement in semiconductors.
To learn more about the Spintronics and its basics in depth Download the PDF here: http:http://freecircuits.org/2012/06/spintronics-fundamentals-applications-pdf-download/