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The Quest for the Spin Transistor
Daktaklakpak writes: "Found this interesting article on the IEEE Spectrum. It details the different attempts to make transistors based on electronic spin. Apparently, this technology is related to the MRAM that we've been hearing so much about."
Article mentions ferromagnetics cross polarised as a switch, a memory cell.
;)
If you cool Xenon to around 0k, it becomes an Einstein condensate-the atoms align and act as one.(Don't have link handy, search will prolly churn plenty) The idea is coherence, just as a laser aligns all it's photons polarizations. It sounds like they have learned how to do this on an atomic level. From what I also understand, domains(think quantized magnet 'particle') tends to degrade unless they are cooled/remain undisturbed.
It does sound like a neat idea, flip an electron without having to take it anywhere, then you don't need a conductor, only a 'resonating structure' to channel the effect somewhere.
Also mentioned is the fact it has no gain, too bad, everything we interface with needs amplification in order to operate. Even your retinas send cascades of electrons with only a single photon. If they can solve the gain problem, this would seem like one of those Moore's Law things, but I wonder how they hold up against stray magnetic/electric fields?
Also mentioned is the energy stored,(n*2+1)/2, which suspiciously sounds like the energy levels of the electrons, ignoring the spins. Even that could be used to store information, but it would certainly be a bugger to keep the electron from transferring the energy.
If they can come up with something equivalent to hi-temp superconductors for spins, I see alot of good coming, just not this week
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
Spintronics is not very promising whereas using photonic bandgap materials to build optical transistors is. See the latest SciAm for a nice article on these materials of the future computing.