ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2006) — That new personal computer is small and super fast, boasts gigabytes of memory, boots up instantly, offers a standby mode that consumes no electric power, and yet keeps programs and data instantly available in active memory. Well, maybe not quite yet.

But, a rapidly emerging field called spintronics may make such revolutionary new electronic devices a reality, according to a report scheduled for the Aug. 28 issue of the ACS's weekly newsmagazine, Chemical & Engineering News.

Senior Editor Mitch Jacoby explains that despite 50 years of progress in developing tiny semiconductor chips packed with millions of transistors, today's circuit elements operate on the same principle as 1940s-vintage transistors. They sense and respond to an electron's charge only.

Spintronics (spin-based electronics) uses an electron's angular momentum, a property associated with magnetism and classified as "spin up" or "spin down." Jacoby describes the innovations that spintronics promises, from the near-term to that futuristic quantum computer, which would encode data as multiple quantum states in addition to the "1s" and "0s" of traditional binary computing.

Fulfilling the promise of advanced electronic devices with unprecedented capabilities will require overcoming major technical challenges, including synthesizing new magnetic semiconductors and other materials with properties suited for spintronics applications, the article notes.

Reference: "Putting a spin on electronics: Potential for advanced technologies is driving search for magnetic semiconductors." Chemical & Engineering News

Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:

Other bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Chemical Society.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Related Stories

New Spin On Graphene Makes It Magnetic (Apr. 15, 2011) — Scientists have found a way to make wonder material graphene magnetic, opening up a new range of opportunities for the world's thinnest material in the area of ...  > read more

New Field Of Nanotechnology Leads To Novel Control Of Quantum State In Electrons (May 31, 2007) — Scientists have combined two fields of study in nanotechnology to create a third field that the researchers believe will lead to revolutionary advances in computer electronics, among many other ...  > read more

Strain and Spin May Enable Ultra-Low-Energy Computing (Aug. 16, 2011) — A new type of integrated circuit may be so energy efficient that it could run simply by harvesting energy from the ...  > read more

Important Step in Next Generation of Computing: Vital Insight Into Spintronics (July 4, 2011) — Scientists have taken one step closer to the next generation of computers. New research provides insight into spintronics, which has been hailed as the successor to the ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily