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Researchers Spin Out Smaller Electronics Than Ever 45

Posted by Zonk 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."
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Researchers Spin Out Smaller Electronics Than Ever More

Researchers Spin Out Smaller Electronics Than Ever

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  • Spintronics is scary (Score:4, Funny)

    by stox ( 131684 ) on Saturday March 24, 2007 @02:29AM (#18468463) Homepage
    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.
    • What happens if a manufacturer sells devices to the public, and all the complementary ( ie. opposite spin ) devices to the government?

      Ok, I'm going to assume you are talking about quantum entanglement and that you are suggesting that the devices sold to consumers are entangled with another device, which is then sold/given to the government to monitor what the user does? I'm no quantum physicist but I'm pretty sure the tech for that is a bit more complicated than spintronics, also it would be infeasible fo

    • The spooks will really have a windfall then.
      Ah, that's all just conspiracy theory spin! ;)

  • Fundamentals... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BrianKHud ( 115884 ) on Saturday March 24, 2007 @02:39AM (#18468507) Homepage
    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 [wikipedia.org] 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...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by inasra ( 1079579 )

      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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by X-treme-LLama ( 178013 )

      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.

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

      The quote you posted sounds bad, out of context, but the article was quite clear they meant it takes far less energy to rotate an electron, rather than move it any appreciable distance (ie. down a wire).

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by cuantar ( 897695 )
        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 aroun

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Quoting from http://www.mdronline.com/watch/watch_Issue.asp?Vol name=Issue+%23022007&on=1 [mdronline.com]
      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 [computerworld.com] is considered sane.

      It's not a new technology, but from the articl

    • Re:Fundamentals... (Score:4, Informative)

      by bh_doc ( 930270 ) <brendon@quantumf ... l.net minus city> on Saturday March 24, 2007 @04:07AM (#18468953) Homepage

      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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TeknoHog ( 164938 )

        "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.

      • Re:Fundamentals... (Score:4, Informative)

        by The_Wilschon ( 782534 ) on Sunday March 25, 2007 @01:00AM (#18476179) Homepage

        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>

    • ...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. . .

      Well, them and disgraced fundamentalist preachers [wikipedia.org].

      It's almost accurate though if you only count translations as movement. I know, it's a stretch...

  • "Spin Out Smaller Electronics" (Score:3, Funny)

    by masterzora ( 871343 ) on Saturday March 24, 2007 @03:10AM (#18468665)
    Haha, I get it! Electrons spin! Get it? Get it?
  • Maybe they can get more efficient solar panels out of this, now that would be a disruptive technology.
  • at least these Spin researchers are not in the medical profession...

  • What about? (Score:4, Funny)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Saturday March 24, 2007 @03:28AM (#18468773)
    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?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bh_doc ( 930270 )
      I believe you to be speaking tongue in cheek. :P

      Nevertheless, in order to avoid confusion for anyone else: The spin of an electron is defined relative to an external magnetic field, always. A spin up electron is only spin up within the field in which it was set. Change the external field and you will no longer have spin up. Remove the field and you won't have any spin (because you can't measure it without that field).

      So, those of us in the southern hemisphere will define our spins according to whereever our

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Proofof. Chaos ( 1067060 )

      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.

  • Thermal Relaxation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bh_doc ( 930270 ) <brendon@quantumf ... l.net minus city> on Saturday March 24, 2007 @03:54AM (#18468901) Homepage
    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?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )
      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 the

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by 10053r ( 517050 )
      If this is the same breakthrough that was also featured on digg, then they claim to have achieved a ratio of about 1000000 to 1 in terms of the relaxation time to clock cycles. With a million clock cycles to play with, it seems likely that they would be able to read the spin state somewhere around clock cycle 900000 and refresh it with plenty of time to spare, similar to the way DRAM requires periodic input energy to retain data.

  • Spin on the whole thing (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sooner Boomer ( 96864 ) <sooner.boomr@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Saturday March 24, 2007 @04:32AM (#18468999) Journal
    "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 [wikipedia.org]

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