With apologies to Isaac Asimov, the most exciting phase to hear in science isn't "Eureka," but "That's funny..."
A "that's funny" moment in a Colorado State University physics lab has led to a fundamental discovery
that could play a key role in next-generation microelectronics.
Publishing in Nature Physics April
25, the scientists, led by Professor of Physics Mingzhong Wu in CSU's
College of Natural Sciences, are the first to demonstrate using
non-polarized light to produce in a metal what's called a spin voltage
-- a unit of power produced from the quantum spinning of an individual
electron. Controlling electron spins for use in memory and logic
applications is a relatively new field called spin electronics, or
spintronics, and the subject of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Wu and his group's passion is to find new, better ways to control
electron spins, the physics of which isn't completely understood.
Spintronics exploits the notion that electron spins can be manipulated
and used to process and store information, with a fraction of the power
needed in ubiquitous, conventional electronics.
Consider that the iPhone and every electronic device out there is built
upon centuries of science around charge current -- the physics of
positive or negative charges flowing through a device. The perennial
problem is the enormous power consumption of charge-current devices, and
the electrical resistance that causes power loss in the form of heat --
which is why your laptop keeps overheating.
It's these power and heat barriers that are holding smaller, more
powerful electronics back. And it's why science is turning to
spintronics, because it offers a completely new way of making a device
work. To utilize power from an electron spin, there's no charge current
necessary. All that's needed is a magnetic field or a magnetic material,
which can orient the spins "up" or "down." The up and down spins are
the analogue to positive and negative charges.
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