CHALLENGES AND EMERGING DIRECTIONS IN SPINTRONICS

Albert Fert
UMP CNRS/Thales, Palaiseau and Universit Paris-Sud, Orsay, France
ABSTRACT
Spintronics is a new field of research exploiting the
influence of the electron spin on the electrical conduction.
It is mainly known for the giant magnetoresistance
(GMR)1-2 and the large increase of the hard disc capacity
obtained with the read heads based on GMR. But the
research on spintronics has also revealed many other
interesting effects and is now developing along promising
novel directions.
The physical basis of spintronics is the influence of
the electron spin orientation on the electrical conduction in
magnetic materials: the conductivity can be much larger
for electrons having, for example, their spin aligned with
the magnetization3-4. The GMR1,2,5 exploits this spin
dependence in magnetic multilayers composed by a stack
of ultra-thin layers (a few nm) with, alternately, layers of
magnetic (iron for example) and nonmagnetic metals
(copper or chromium for example). A magnetic field, by
aligning the magnetizations of all the magnetic layers,
makes that there is an electrical short-circuit by half of the
electrons which have the good spin orientation in ALL
the magnetic layers. Without magnetic ordering by an
applied field, the short-circuit effect does not exist and the
electrical resistance is much larger. The large reduction of
the electrical resistance by a magnetic field has been called
giant magnetoresistance or GMR. The GMR is used to
read the magnetic inscriptions on the hard discs of today67 and the possibility of reading smaller inscriptions has led
to a considerable increase (three orders of magnitude) of
the capacity of the hard discs6-7.
The discovery of the GMR in 1988 kicked off an
intense search of other phenomena also related to the
influence of the electron spin on the electrical conduction.
New effects have been found and this domain of research
is now called spintronics8, sometimes described as a new
type of electronics exploiting both the charge and the spin
of the electrons.
An example of very active field of research is the
study of the spin transfer phenomena9-11. In a spin
transfer experiment one manipulates the magnetization
orientation of a magnet without applying any magnetic
field the usual way but by a transfusion of spin
angular momentum from a spin-polarized current. This
can be used, for example, to reverse the magnetization10
and this will be used soon in the next generation of
magnetic memories called STT-RAM. The STT-RAM, in
contrast with the semiconductor RAM of today, are nonvolatile, they do not need any electrical power to maintain
the memory alive7. This will probably lead to a
significant reduction of the energy consumption by the
computers ad servers. In another regime the spin transfer
can be used to generate oscillation in the radio wave
frequency range11. The spin transfer oscillators (STO) are
very promising of applications in telecommunications.
The research in spintronics extends today in many
promising directions. Spintronics with semiconductors

978-1-4673-0325-5/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

aims at combining the potential of conventional

semiconductors with the potential of spintronics8.
Spintronics with graphene, carbon nanotubes or organic
molecules has revealed the advantage of carbon-based
materials on metals and semiconductors in term of long
spin life time and long spin diffusion length12. The recent
results on graphene are promising for the relay of
conventional electronics in the so-called beyond-CMOS
perspective and open the road, for example, to spin only
logic circuits for a novel type of computer technology.
Emerging directions are also single electron spintronics,
one of the way to quantum computing, and neuromorphic
spintronics in the direction of bio-inspired computers.
REFERENCES

[1] Baibich, M.N., Broto, J.M., Fert, A.,

Nguyen Van Dau, F., Petroff, F., Etienne,
P, Creuzet, G., Friederich, A. and Chazelas
J. 1988. Giant Magnetoresistance of (001)
Fe/(001) Cr magnetic superlattices. Phys.
Rev. Lett. 61:2472-75
[2] Binash, G., Grnberg, P., Saurenbach, F.
and
Zinn,
W.
1989.
Enhanced
magnetoresistance in layered magnetic
structures with antiferromagnetic interlayer
exchange. Phys. Rev. B 39:4828-30
[3] Mott,
N.F.
1936.
The
electrical
conductivity of transition metals. Proc.
Roy. Soc. A 153:699-718
[4] Fert, A. and Campbell, I.A. 1968. Two
current conduction in nickel. Phys. Rev.
Lett. 21:1190-92.
[5] Fert, A., Barthlmy, A. and Petroff, F.
2006. Spin transport in Magnetic
Multilayers and Tunnel Junctions. In
Nanomagnetism: Ultrathin Films and
Nanostructures, ed. F. Mills and J. A.C.
Bland, 153-226 Amsterdam : Elsevier
[6] Parkin, S.S.P. 2002. Applications of
Magnetic
Nanostructures.
In
Spin
Dependent
Transport
in
Magnetic
nanostructures, ed S. Maekawa and T.
Shinjo, 237-279. Taylor and Francis

MEMS 2012, Paris, FRANCE, 29 January - 2 February 2012

[7] C. Chappert, C., A. Fert, A., and. Nguyen

Van Dau, F. 2007. The emergence of spin
electronics in data storage. Nature
Materials 6:813-23.
[8] see Handbook of Spin Transport and
Magnetism, edited by E. Y. Tsymbal and I.
Zuric, CRC Press, 2011.
[9] Slonczewski, J.C. 1996. Current-driven
excitation of magnetic multilayers. J.
Magn. Mat. 159:L1-L7
[10] Albert, F. J., Katine, J.A., Albert, F.J.,
Buhrman, et al. 2000. Spin-polarized
current switching of a Co thin film
nanomagnet. Appl. Phys. Lett. 77:3809-11.
[11] Rippart, W.H., Pufall, M.R., Kaka, S.,
Russek, S.E. and Silva, T.J. 2004. Directcurrent
induced
dynamics
in
Co90Fe10/Ni80Fe20 point contacts. Phys. Rev.
Lett. 92:027201-1 to 4
[12] Hueso, L.E., Pruneda, J.M., Ferrari, V. et
al. 2007. Transformation of spin
information into large electrical signals
using carbon nanotubes. Nature 445:410-13