Spin-based ‘magnetologic gate’ to replace silicon chips

Thursday, 06 October 2011 10:46

A magnetologic gate consists of graphene contacted by several magnetic electrodes. Data is stored in the magnetic state of the electrodes, similar to the way data is stored in a magnetic hard drive. For the logic operations, electrons move through the graphene and use its spin state to compare the information held in the individual magnetic electrodes. (Credit: Kawakami lab, UC Riverside) The University of California, Riverside has received a $1.85 million National Science Foundation grant to develop a new way of electron-spin-based computing beyond the scope of conventional silicon electronics.

The goal of the project is to speed up applications that process large amounts of data such as Internet searching, data compression, and image recognition.

“Conventional silicon electronics will soon face its ultimate limits,” said Roland Kawakami, a professor of physics and astronomy and the four-year grant’s principal investigator. “Our approach is to utilize the spin degree of freedom to store and process information, which will allow the functions of logic and memory to be fully integrated into a single chip.”

Spin is a fundamental characteristic property of electrons that causes them to behave as tiny magnets with a “north” and “south” pole. Electrons can occupy different spin states corresponding to different orientations for the magnetic poles. For spin-based computing, data is held in the spin state of the electron.

Read full article