"CHIPS: Spintronics approach advances toward live chips"

A research group at the State University of New York at Buffalo has announced a promising technique in spintronics that might be used in standard silicon chips in the near future. Spintronics combines today's charge-based data storage and communication with magnetic-based information using spin as the common coin. The experimental group has managed to inject electrons with spin into silicon chips by virtue of a ferromagnetic semiconductor junction with silicon. Spintronics marries electronics to magnetism by encoding electronic data with magnetic spin. Theorists recommend using techniques that have already been proved with gallium arsenide semiconductors to inject electrons with spin into silicon circuits. Their cookbook proposes techniques for spin injection and detection in silicon with colleagues at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. The researchers predict that the most promising technique, called the spin-voltaic effect, will bring spintronics to standard silicon chips within a year. They have already cast his spin-voltaic effect into experimental gallium arsenide chips and plan to have silicon devices working by 2007.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193600270