The quest of ever improving the performance of microchips in a seemingly exponential form has come to an abrupt end. This is not due to our ability to reduce the size of the device but to manage the heat generated at these nanoscales. This is known in the IT community as the problem 2020, in which the power output projections as chips get smaller predicts that the operating temperatures of a laptop would reach the temperature of the surface of the sun. Not a pleasant scenario. Hence, a large effort is being conducted to obtain alternative means of computation which have potential lower power consumption. One of these new possible computational variables is the spin, rather than the charge, of electrons. This is the field of spintronics in which spin and charge are coupled together and manipulated simultaneously. Research in semiconductor spintronics has revealed new physical effects and microelectronic device concepts, such as the Datta-Das spin field effect transistor. We have developed a new device concept based on novel spin-dynamics and a fuller understanding of the anomalous Hall effect in semiconductors which has a great potential as a practical spin-based all semiconductor device. I will describe the motivation of this work, the theory design and modeling of the experiment, the experimental results and the implications in terms of actual new device concepts.
References
[1] J. Wunderlich, A. C. Irvine, Jairo Sinova, B. G. Park, X. L. Xu, B. Kaestner, V. Novak, and
T. Jungwirth, "Spin-injection Hall effect in a planar photovoltaic cell", Nature Physics 5, 675 (2009).
[2] I. Zutic, "Spin take sides", Nature Physics, 5 630 (2009)