'Spintronics' for next-generation computers

Using powerful lasers, Hui Zhao, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas, and graduate student Lalani Werake have discovered a new way to recognize currents of spinning electrons within a semiconductor.

Their findings could lead the way to development of superior computers and electronics. Results from their work in KU's Ultrafast Laser Lab would be reported in the recent issue of Nature Physics, a leading peer-evaluated journal, and was posted online in early August.

Zhao and Werake research spin-based electronics, dubbed "spintronics."

"The goal is to replace everything - from computers to memory devices - to have higher performance and less energy consumption," said Zhao.

The KU investigator said that future advancements to microchips would require a different approach for transmitting the sequences of ones and zeros that make up digital information.

"We have been using the charge of the electron for several decades," said Zhao. "But right now the size of each device is just 30 to 50 nanometers, and you don't have a number of atoms remaining on that tiny scale. We can't continue that way anymore because we're hitting a fundamental limit".

Instead of using the presence or absence of electronic charges, spintronics relies on the direction of an electron's rotation to convey data.........