14 DAY TRIAL // "Spintronics" is an emerging field that deals with the use of the 'spin' of an electron for storing, processing and communicating information, and is has known an important recent advance that may one day manifest itself in a new generation of smaller, smarter and faster computers, sensors and other devices.
A team of electrical and computer engineers from the Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Engineering and the University of Cincinnati examined the 'spin' of electrons in organic nanowires, which are ultra-small structures made from organic materials, with a diameter of 50 nanometers (2,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair)
Due to the fact that the spin of an electron is a property that makes the electron act like a tiny magnet, it can be used to encode information in electronic circuits, computers, and virtually every other electronic gadget.
"In order to store and process information, the spin of an electron must be relatively robust. The most important property that determines the robustness of spin is the so-called 'spin relaxation time,' which is the time it takes for the spin to 'relax.' When spin relaxes, the information encoded in it is lost. Therefore, we want the spin relaxation time to be as long as possible," said corresponding author Supriyo Bandyopadhyay, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
"Typically, the spin relaxation time in most materials is a few nanoseconds to a few microseconds. We are the first to study spin relaxation time in organic nanostructures and found that it can be as long as a second. This is at least 1000 times longer than what has been reported in any other system," Bandyopadhyay said.
Newly engineered nanostructures, from organic molecules that typically contain carbon and hydrogen atoms, tend to keep the spin relatively isolated from perturbations that cause it to relax, leading to a very long spin relaxation time: "The organic spin valves we developed are based on self-assembled structures grown on flexible substrates which could have a tremendous impact on the rapidly developing field of plastic electronics, such as flexible panel displays," said Marc Cahay, Ph.D., so organic materials will be ideal hosts for spintronic devices.
The use of nanoscale components in computer technology means that it is possible to pack trillions of such components just a few billionths of a meter in size into an area the size of a wrist watch display, thus opening huge possibilities in future miniaturization techniques.