Spintronics, or spin electronics, involves the study of active control and manipulation of spin degrees of freedom in solid-state systems. This article reviews the current status of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling. The authors discuss in detail spin decoherence mechanisms in metals and semiconductors. Various theories of spin injection and spin-polarized transport are applied to hybrid structures relevant to spin-based devices and fundamental studies of materials properties. Experimental work is reviewed with the emphasis on projected applications, in which external electric and magnetic fields and illumination by light will be used to control spin and charge dynamics to create new functionalities not feasible or ineffective with conventional electronics.

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Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

Nanocrystals (NCs) discussed in this Review are tiny crystals of metals, semiconductors, and magnetic material consisting of hundreds to a few thousand atoms each. Their size ranges from 2-3 to about 20 nm. What is special about this size regime that placed NCs among the hottest research topics of the last decades? The quantum mechanical coupling * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dvtalapin@uchicago.edu. † The University of Chicago. ‡ Argonne National Lab. Chem. Rev. 2010, 110, 389–458 389

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Prospects of Colloidal Nanocrystals for Electronic and Optoelectronic Applications

Ever since its discovery, the Berry phase has permeated through all branches of physics. Over the last three decades, it was gradually realized that the Berry phase of the electronic wave function can have a profound effect on material properties and is responsible for a spectrum of phenomena, such as ferroelectricity, orbital magnetism, various (quantum/anomalous/spin) Hall effects, and quantum charge pumping. This progress is summarized in a pedagogical manner in this review. We start with a brief summary of necessary background, followed by a detailed discussion of the Berry phase effect in a variety of solid state applications. A common thread of the review is the semiclassical formulation of electron dynamics, which is a versatile tool in the study of electron dynamics in the presence of electromagnetic fields and more general perturbations. Finally, we demonstrate a re-quantization method that converts a semiclassical theory to an effective quantum theory. It is clear that the Berry phase should be added as a basic ingredient to our understanding of basic material properties.

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Berry phase effects on electronic properties

Spin currents can apply useful torques in spintronic devices. The spin Hall effect has been proposed as a source of spin current, but its modest strength has limited its usefulness. We report a giant spin Hall effect (SHE) in β-tantalum that generates spin currents intense enough to induce efficient spin-torque switching of ferromagnets at room temperature. We quantify this SHE by three independent methods and demonstrate spin-torque switching of both out-of-plane and in-plane magnetized layers. We furthermore implement a three-terminal device that uses current passing through a tantalum-ferromagnet bilayer to switch a nanomagnet, with a magnetic tunnel junction for read-out. This simple, reliable, and efficient design may eliminate the main obstacles to the development of magnetic memory and nonvolatile spin logic technologies.

Spin-torque switching with the giant spin hall effect of tantalum

In solid-state materials with strong relativistic spin-orbit coupling, charge currents generate transverse spin currents. The associated spin Hall and inverse spin Hall effects distinguish between charge and spin current where electron charge is a conserved quantity but its spin direction is not. This review provides a theoretical and experimental treatment of this subfield of spintronics, beginning with distinct microscopic mechanisms seen in ferromagnets and concluding with a discussion of optical-, transport-, and magnetization-dynamics-based experiments closely linked to the microscopic and phenomenological theories presented.

Spin Hall effects

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce the thermal fluctuation of a storage cell, and to stably achieve a writing operation when using a flux reversal process utilizing no reversal field in writing to a memory cell. SOLUTION: A magnetic memory element has a structure in which a first magnetization fixing terminal 13 and a second magnetization fixing terminal 14 are connected apart from one surface of a non-magnetic region 11, and a magnetization-free terminal 15 is connected to the other surface. The direction of the magnetization of the first magnetization fixing terminal and that of the second magnetization fixing terminal are antiparallel. The writing is conducted by reversing the magnetization of the magnetization-free terminal by controlling the polarity of a current made to flow between the first magnetization fixing terminal and the second magnetization fixing terminal through the non-magnetic region. Magnetoresistance generated accompanied by the change of the direction of relative magnetization between the first magnetization fixing terminal and the magnetization-free terminal is detected and read. COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Magnetic memory element and magnetic memory device

Spin-relaxation and magnetoresistance in FM/SC/FM tunnel junctions

We theoretically study the spin pumping from the two ferromagnetic layers embedded in a normal metal and investigate the spin current and spin accumulation generated by the precessing magnetizations, focusing on their dependence on the relative precessional motion and the layer separation. We demonstrate a giant enhancement of spin pumping induced in the out-of-phase precession mode of the magnetizations in which the pumped spin current and spin accumulation are greatly enhanced compared to those in the in-phase precession mode. The giant enhancement of spin pumping is discussed in relation to an enhanced Gilbert damping.

Giant enhancement of spin pumping in the out-of-phase precession mode

The spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance (ST-FMR) in a bilayer system consisting of a magnetic insulator such as Y3Fe5O12 and a normal metal with spin-orbit interaction such as Pt is addressed theoretically. We model the ST-FMR for all magnetization directions and in the presence of fieldlike spin-orbit torques based on the drift-diffusion spin model and quantum mechanical boundary conditions. ST-FMR experiments may expose crucial information about the spin-orbit coupling between currents and magnetization in the bilayers.

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Current-induced spin torque resonance of magnetic insulators affected by field-like spin-orbit torques and out-of-plane magnetizations

Magneto-optical Faraday effect is widely applied in optical devices and is indispensable for optical communications and advanced information technology. However, the bismuth garnet Bi-YIG is only the Faraday material since 1972. Here we introduce (Fe, FeCo)-(Al-,Y-fluoride) nanogranular films exhibiting giant Faraday effect, 40 times larger than Bi-YIG. These films have a nanocomposite structure, in which nanometer-sized Fe, FeCo ferromagnetic granules are dispersed in a Al,Y-fluoride matrix.

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Saburo Takahashi

Papers

Magnetic memory element and magnetic memory device

Spin-relaxation and magnetoresistance in FM/SC/FM tunnel junctions

Giant enhancement of spin pumping in the out-of-phase precession mode

Current-induced spin torque resonance of magnetic insulators affected by field-like spin-orbit torques and out-of-plane magnetizations

Giant Faraday Rotation in Metal-Fluoride Nanogranular Films