Researchers report room-temperature silicon spintronics

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The team was led by Ron Jansen at the Mesa Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente, and to achieve the breakthrough the researchers insert a layer of aluminum oxide between the magnetic material and the semiconductor that is less than one nanometer thick.

The thickness and quality of this layer are crucial. The information is transferred by applying an electric current across the oxide interface, thereby introducing a magnetization in the semiconductor, with a controllable magnitude and orientation. The researchers found that the spin information can propagate into the silicon to a depth of several hundred nanometers. This is sufficient for the operation of nanoscale spintronic components.

The next step is to build electronic components and circuits and use them to manipulate spin information, the research team said, in a statement.

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