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 provide a magnetic apparatus using a spin injection element which can provide a large signal voltage with a low current and a low magnetic field and can also be micronized. SOLUTION: A first and a second tunnel junctions (2, 3), wherein a non-magnetic conductor 4 is used as a common electrode while ferroelectric materials (6, 8) are used as the electrode, are arranged with an interval which is shorter than the spin spreading length of the non-magnetic conductor 4. Moreover, in the first tunnel junction 2, the spin is injected to the non-magnetic conductor 4 from a ferroelectric metal 6. In the second tunnel junction 3, a voltage accompanying the spin injection of the first tunnel junction 2 is detected between the ferroelectric material 8 and non-magnetic conductor 4. The non-magnetic conductor 4 is lower then the metal in the carrier density. A large signal voltage can be obtained with a low current and a low magnetic field. A high sensitivity magnetic sensor, a high sensitivity magnetic head, and MRAM having a large signal voltage can be provided by using such non-magnetic conductor as a magnetic device. COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO&NCIPI

Spin injection element and magnetic apparatus using the same

A rectenna, standing for a rectifying antenna, is an apparatus which generates d.c. electricity from electric fluctuations. It is expected to realize wireless power transmission as well as energy harvesting from environmental radio waves. To realize such rectification, devices that are made up of internal atomic asymmetry such as an asymmetric junction have been necessary so far. Here we report a material that spontaneously generates electricity by rectifying environmental fluctuations without using atomic asymmetry. The sample is a common superconductor without lowered crystalline symmetry, but, just by putting it in an asymmetric magnetic environment, it turns into a rectifier and starts generating electricity. Superconducting vortex strings only annihilate and nucleate at surfaces, and this allows the bulk electrons to feel surface fluctuations in an asymmetric environment: a vortex rectenna. The rectification and generation can be switched on and off with only a slight change in temperature or external magnetic fields.

Vortex rectenna powered by environmental fluctuations

We theoretically study the operation of a 4-terminal device consisting of two lateral thin-film spin valves that are coupled by a magnetic insulator such as yttrium iron garnet via the spin transfer torque. By magnetoelectronic circuit theory we calculate the current voltage characteristics and find negative differential resistance and differential gain in a large region of parameter space. We demonstrate that functionality is preserved when the control spin valve is replaced by a normal metal film with a large spin Hall angle.

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Spin torque transistor revisited

We propose a novel Josephson device in which 0 and $\pi$ states are controlled by an electrical current. In this system, the $\pi$ state appears in a superconductor/normal metal/superconductor junction due to the non-local spin accumulation in the normal metal which is induced by spin injection from a ferromagnetic electrode. Our proposal offers not only new possibilities for application of superconducting spin-electronic devices but also the in-depth understanding of the spin-dependent phenomena in magnetic nanostructures.

Controllable π junction with magnetic nanostructures

Superconducting properties of artificial multilayer superconductors and layered cuprate-oxide superconductors are studied on a unified basis of the proximity effect. In multilayers composed of two superconductors with different H c2 , an anomaly in the temperature dependence of H c2 is predicted in relation to a transition between the two different vortex states. For the cuprate oxides we take a model in which superconductivity is generated in the CuO 2 layers and superconductivity in the other layers is induced by the proximity effect. On a basis of this model, anomalous behavior of the tunneling conductance, the optical conductivity, the critical fields, the critical current, etc. observed in the superconducting state of the oxides is explained.

Saburo Takahashi

Papers

Spin injection element and magnetic apparatus using the same

Vortex rectenna powered by environmental fluctuations

Spin torque transistor revisited

Controllable π junction with magnetic nanostructures

Theory of superconductivity in multilayer systems