Research Opens the Way Towards More Energy-Efficient Spintronics

Electron spin--a fundamentally quantum property--is central to spintronics, a technology that revolutionized data storage, and that could play a major role in creating new computer processors. In order to generate and detect spin currents, spintronics traditionally uses ferromagnetic materials whose magnetization switching consume high amounts of energy.

In the April 22, 2020 issue of Nature, researchers at the Spintec Laboratory (CNRS/CEA/Université Grenoble Alpes) and the CNRS/Thales Laboratory recently presented an approach that can detect spin information at low power using a non-magnetic system. Their research opens the way towards spintronic devices that operate on ferroelectricity rather than on ferromagnetism, thereby consuming 1,000 times less energy.