Grant: Special Research Opportunity Program - Inter-American Collaboration in Materials Research

The future of information and computing technologies will revolve around three words: smaller, cooler, faster. Spintronics--electronics based on electron spin rather than electron charge--has received much recent attention for its potential to push this technology forward. Several recent experiments have proven that it is possible to build nanometer-scale devices that operate on a single spin; these devices would generate far less heat than conventional ones; and quantum propteries of spin are far more robust than those of charge, allowing dramatic speedups for many computational problems. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for spintronics is the difficulty of controlling spins in solid state devices. Semiconducting structures allow charges to be controlled simply by changing the voltages on electrostatic gates, but the analog does not yet exist for spin. Right now, controlling spin means working with ferromagnets, applying large magnetic fields or using lasers for optical preparation and detection of spin This is a proposal to realize an all-electrical device that controls spin using a spin-orbit interaction. The proposal integrates new materials from Lucent Technologies that are being developed for this collaboration with new theoretical insights about how to use spin-orbit interaction to build a useful device. The next few years will bring important milestones in the field of spintronics, and this proposal keeps Canada at the forefront of those advances.