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Researchers Spin Out Smaller Electronics Than Ever

Posted by Zonk on from the can-i-borrow-your-illustrated-primer dept.

schliz writes "Scientists have found a more efficient way to harness the spin of an electron to store and process information. The new technology, dubbed 'spintronics', has potentials in the development of nanoscale devices that are much more energy efficient than current charge-based electronic devices. Researchers expect the new technology to be incorporated in computing circuitry within the next decade."

19 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Spintronics is scary by stox · · Score: 3, Funny

    What happens if a manufacturer sells devices to the public, and all the complementary ( ie. opposite spin ) devices to the government? The spooks will really have a windfall then.

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
    1. Re:Spintronics is scary by dreamchaser · · Score: 3, Funny

      Your sense of humor called. It misses you and wants to get back together. I really hope you two can work it out this time.

  2. Fundamentals... by BrianKHud · · Score: 4, Insightful
    To save you the time -

    Here's one I haven't heard before?

    ...Current day electronics are predominantly charge-based; that is, electrons are given more or less electric charge...

    Millikan says otherwise if I recall...

    Another strong point. . .

    ...does not require any physical movement of the electron and is achieved simply by changing its orientation


    Last I checked, only politicians could change orientation without physically moving. . .

    Currently, spintronics-based memory chips are being used in memory marketed by Texas-based Freescale Semiconductors, as well as data retrieval devices like those in Apple's iPods. The technology has not yet been incorporated in computing circuitry in any major way;


    Sorry, now I just have to ask who reviewed this article for sanity...
    --
    He who controls the past, commands the future... He who controls the future conquers the past.
    1. Re:Fundamentals... by inasra · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sorry, now I just have to ask who reviewed this article for sanity... Didn't you get the memo? Slashdot uses a new technology called spin-a-yarn which auto magically chooses the best stories out of all the submitted ones. Unfortunately it sometimes spins so fast that it goes back in time and reposts a few stories now and then. But most of the time it spins so slowly that it always ends up posting current stories in the future.
      --
      Life is a mystery. There is no point having a mystery if you are not curious.
    2. Re:Fundamentals... by X-treme-LLama · · Score: 2, Funny

      Last I checked, only politicians could change orientation without physically moving. . . No, politicians are the only ones who can appear to have their nose to the grindstone while straddling the fence and keeping both ears to the ground.
      --
      My rantings, only longer and with better spelling..
    3. Re:Fundamentals... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Quoting from http://www.mdronline.com/watch/watch_Issue.asp?Vol name=Issue+%23022007&on=1
      Freescale wins an MPR Analysts' Choice Award for MRAM (magnetic random-access memory). Freescale's MR2A16A is the first commercially available memory chip based on spintronics technology. (See MPR 2/20/07-04, "MPR Innovation Award: MRAM.")

        I'd say a few people, if http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardwa re/story/0,10801,83987,00.html is considered sane.

      It's not a new technology, but from the article, they seem to have made some improvements. Maybe you should try reading it?

    4. Re:Fundamentals... by bh_doc · · Score: 4, Informative

      Last I checked, only politicians could change orientation without physically moving. . .
      "Electron spin" is a misnomer. The electron is not really spinning. This is just a name for the particular quantum mechanical property that causes the electron to deflect one way or another when travelling through a magnetic field.

      So, besides being wrong or misleading in other areas, the article is actually right about the electron not physically moving in order to change it's spin orientation. As has been pointed out, it does require energy, however. Supposedly this is less than the typically required voltage change.
    5. Re:Fundamentals... by TeknoHog · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Electron spin" is a misnomer. The electron is not really spinning. This is just a name for the particular quantum mechanical property that causes the electron to deflect one way or another when travelling through a magnetic field.

      Well, that particular quantum-mechanical property is called 'spin' by pretty much all physicists, so I wouldn't call it a misnomer. It was originally thought to be actual rotation, since its behaviour mimics that of a charged rotating sphere in some ways. Now we know it isn't really spinning, but the name 'spin' has stuck since we don't have any better name for it.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    6. Re:Fundamentals... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2, Funny

      That would explain why Hillary Clinton wears so much makeup.

    7. Re:Fundamentals... by cuantar · · Score: 2, Informative

      But it's not about rotating an electron at all. We're talking about spin angular momentum, which is a quantum mechanical property of particles like electrons and cannot really be related back to any sort of classical quantity. The only reason we call it 'spin' is because it's what gives the electron angular momentum. As far as we (physicists) know, electrons lack any sort of high-level structure, so it doesn't even make sense to talk about rotating them.

      The idea is that instead of moving charges around, it would be much more efficient to harness intrinsic properties of 'stationary' particles -- spin up and spin down, instead of plus and minus charges. If we can figure out some way to easily flip the spin on an electron, then it could conceivably be used as a bit to store information.

      --
      Legalize it.
    8. Re:Fundamentals... by The_Wilschon · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is just a name for the particular quantum mechanical property that causes the electron to deflect one way or another when travelling through a magnetic field.
      Bzzzt! You are referring to the Stern-Gerlach effect, I believe. Firstly, electrons have electric charge, which means that they will deflect when traveling through a magnetic field anyway, even if they were spin-0 particles. Secondly, the Stern-Gerlach effect requires not just any magnetic field, but an inhomogeneous one. That is, a magnetic field which is pointing perpendicularly to the direction of electron travel, and varies in strength along the direction the magnetic field is pointing. Then you get splitting based on spin (up or down).

      But, spin is far more and far more important than just the Stern-Gerlach effect. Above all, spin is angular momentum, just as any rotating object has angular momentum (hence the name spin). Now, we know that even if electrons and other (we think) fundamental particles have some kind of non-infinitesimal structure (in which case they are quite likely not fundamental), that structure is so small that in order to produce the measured angular momentum, the outermost portions of the electron would have to be moving faster than the speed of light. So, unless we've gotten something wrong, you are correct that the electron is not really spinning. But nonetheless, spin is angular momentum, a locally conserved quantity.

      Spin also plays a very important role in both chemistry and nuclear physics (in similar ways). The spin of a particle determines whether it is a fermion or a boson, and thus how it plays with other particles like itself. You can't have more than one electron in any given quantum state, because the electron is a fermion. Since spin is part of the quantum state, you can have two electrons in one energy state, so long as they have opposite spins. If spin didn't exist, chemistry would be considerably different. Nuclear physics is a little bit like chemistry of the nuclei (protons and neutrons instead of electrons), and without spin, which elements are stable or not would be quite different.

      Finally (not the last that spin is important for, just the last I'm going to talk about), spin is important in solid state physics, and thus in everyday life. That chair you're sitting in? Wouldn't be solid if it weren't for spin. Because electrons are fermions, and can't be in the same state as other electrons, solids don't collapse. Collapsing would require moving electrons down to a lower energy state, and at some point, all lower states are filled. So there is an outward pressure due to the fact that electrons are fermions. The difference between fermions and bosons? Spin. If there were no spin, everything would have to be a boson (or all distinguishable particles), and we wouldn't really get any solids. </gross oversimplifications>
      --
      SIGSEGV caught, terminating

      wait... not that kind of sig.
  3. Re:Correct Link by Heembo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Even better, a clean article-only, non-advertising version of the article here: http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;86278 6408;fp;;fpid;;pf;1

    --
    Horns are really just a broken halo.
  4. "Spin Out Smaller Electronics" by masterzora · · Score: 2, Funny

    Haha, I get it! Electrons spin! Get it? Get it?

    --
    Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
  5. What about? by edwardpickman · · Score: 3, Funny

    Will the devises work in the southern hemisphere? If everything spines in the opposite direction down under will there have to be southern hemisphere versions? Will both versions work on the equator? Most important how much beer does one have to consume for this to be a legitimate topic of conversation?

    1. Re:What about? by Proofof.+Chaos · · Score: 2, Funny

      Most important how much beer does one have to consume for this to be a legitimate topic of conversation? [goes to fridge, gets another]
      5 bottles, apparently.
  6. Thermal Relaxation by bh_doc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is completely ignored in TFA is the effect of thermal relaxation. After a while the effect of heat "leaks" into the spin causing it to revert back to a random (mixed) state. To avoid the effect altogether would require 0 K temperature, i.e. it's impossible.

    There are possibly ways to mitigate the effect, though. I'd like to know what the company pushing this memory tech has come up with to this end (and whether or not it actually works). Anyone know?

    1. Re:Thermal Relaxation by Rich0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, I guess you could use a refresh system combined with ECC.

      I hadn't thought of this before, but the problem with spin is that it is a truly digital attribute. With dynamic RAM the capacitors that make it up are either more than half full, or less than half full. So, intermediate states can be refreshed to the endpoint states to keep the memory intact. With spin you're at one state and instantly flip to the other, so the only way to know that this has happened is to store redundant information and then refresh bits by making them line up with the majority. It will certainly waste quite a bit of space, but if you can store one bit per electron you'll have lots of room to do so...

  7. Re:Quantum Computer by bh_doc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not really. This is just a different representation of the same information, like voltage in electronics, lans and pits on CDs, punched holes in paper (which I'm too young to know much about). These guys are just using an electron's spin: +z to represent 1 and -z to represent 0 (or something along those lines, the actual definition is irrelevant).

    Quantum computing, on the other hand, uses all values in between. Including complex ones. Quantum computing is not binary, but (for certain protocols) can only be measured in binary states. So you're quantum computer can process these complex values (which could well be encoded in electron spin - it is a quantum mechanical property after all) in really tricky ways, just so long as you don't measure intermediate results (that would destroy the coherence - think of it a bit like a quantum computer's Oops). This is what affords quantum computers such massive advantages at certain problems, like searching and factorising.

  8. Spin on the whole thing by Sooner+Boomer · · Score: 2, Informative
    "The new technology, dubbed 'spintronics'"..."new" technology: technology that's almost seven years old*. Now THAT'S spin!

    *see references at bottom of page spintronics

    --
    Chaos maximizes locally around me.