State of Research

The progress in the development of semiconductor devices has been based on the reduction of feature sizes for over 40 years. In about two decades this will no longer be possible without radical changes in the working principle as quantum effects dominate below a certain feature size even at room temperature. For the first time since the discovery of the transistor a revolution will take place and spintronics may have an important role.

Spintronics is a multidisciplinary field of research, aimed at the active manipulation of spin orientation of charge carriers in semiconductors [1]. The fundamental questions are:

1. How can a spin system be polarized efficiently?
2. How long is the spin orientation maintained?
3. How to control the spin orientation?
4. How to perform the readout of a spin orientation?

Generation of spin polarized carriers

Spin relaxation

Spin control and spintronic devices