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Stanford, IBM team to explore ‘spintronics’
Technology giant IBM and Stanford University are teaming up to find ways to build more energy-efficient devices by controlling the magnetic orientation, or spin, of electrons.
The partnership, which will be unveiled today at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, will build on growing research in a field of nanotechnology called spintronics, which focuses on ways in which magnetic properties of electrons can be manipulated to store and process data.
Benjamin Pimentel, Chronicle Staff Writer
Computer technology has relied on devices, such as transistors and microchips, that depend on electrical charges to store and move data.
But scientists have also discovered ways to perform these functions by controlling the magnetic orientation of electrons on semiconductors.
IBM has already used the technology to build better hard-disk heads.
Stuart Parkin, an IBM research fellow, said spintronics could lead to the development of computers that use less power and are able to store more data.
He said that as scientists encounter more limitations in their efforts to build smaller semiconductors, spintronics could lead to new ways to build better computers.
"It is no longer (about) shrinking the transistors, but rather it is doing something different, like adding some material which is fundamentally based on using the spin of the electron," he said.
The new center will be run by Stanford professors, IBM researchers and graduate students. The program will also get additional funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
E-mail Benjamin Pimentel at [email protected].
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