Spintronics!

I think my group's presentation on spintronics (in physics 141a this morning) went quite well. I think we did a good job of ➊ showing the cool devices you can build with spintronics (tom), ➋ showing the physical principles that make them work (michelle and eduardo), and ➌ explaining why these devices are important and how they'll impact your life (me).

• our presentation (powerpoint &mdash sorry)

Spintronics really is incredibly cool. 'Spintronics' is the idea that electronic devices can utilize the spin of the electron in addition to its charge. The basic effect that is exploited is that an electron whose spin is aligned with an external magnetic field has a lower energy than one whose spin is anti-aligned. We can produce spin-polarised currents in ferromagnetic elements, measure the polarization of a current by having it tunnel into a ferromagnetic element of known orientation, and we can rotate the spin polarization by use of a magnetic field. The result is that it is possible, in principle, to build Spin FET's and Spin RAM and it's conceivable that spintronics techniques could bring us a solid state quantum computer.

For links to articles and papers that explain all of this stuff, see nibot_lab's spintronics entry.

I also ran across Gordon Moore's article in which he states "Moore's Law" for the first time. It's really amazing how far we've come. He predicts in 1965 that we may in the next decade (ending 1975) manage to integrate 65,000 transistors on a single silicon chip. In 2000, pentium processes contained something like 100,000,000 transistors on a single chip. All of the basic issues about integration density and heat dissipation are mentioned in that paper by Moore. Here's a particularly amusing quote:

"Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers --- or at least terminals connected to a central computer --- automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment. The electronic wristwatch needs only a display to be feasible today." — Gordon Moore, 1965

Anyway, the spintronics project was fun and it even makes me want to pursue research in spintronics! But nonlinear optics is also incredibly cool and there's more of that at Rochester (and no spintronics).

Maybe this post should go on nibot_lab.. I dunno. P.S. The new Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center is having some kick-off festivities on Thursday. See that link for more info.