Katzenstein Distinguished Lecture Series

Spintronics, at the interface between magnetism and electronics, is a research field in considerable expansion. It takes its roots in results of fundamental research on the electrical conduction in ferromagnetic conductors and its development followed the discovery of the Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) of the magnetic multilayers in 1988. Its basic concept is the manipulation of spin currents, in contrast to mainstream electronics in which the spin of the electron is ignored.

After an introduction on the fundamentals of spin dependent conduction, the GMR and the applications of GMR, I will focus on recent developments in spintronics. This will include a review of results on spin transfer (magnetic switching or generation of microwave oscillations by injection of spin angular momentum from an electrical current), on spintronics with semiconductors and on spintronics with carbon nanotubes. The synchronization and phase locking of a collection of STO’s (Spin Transfer Oscillators) is the example of an important new problem raised by the progress in the generation of microwave oscillations by spin transfer. Another example of challenging field of research is molecular spintronics, with carbon nanotubes, graphene or other molecules.