The spin on electronics!

Abstract

Technological advances in generating, manipulating, and detecting spin-polarized electrons and electric current has made possible new classed of spin based sensor, memory, and logic devices. One key element of many such devices is the magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJ), a sandwich of thin layers of metallic ferromagnetic electrodes separated by a tunneling barrier. The electronic structure of the ferromagnet together with that of the insulator determines the spin polarization of the current through an MTJ, the ratio of up to down spin electrons. The spin polarization can reach 80% for conventional 3d ferromagnets so that magnetic tunnel injectors are promising sources of spin polarized current for potential spintronic devices.