Type:
Journal
Description:
Beyond the ultimate scaling limits of conventional semiconductor electronics, the electron spin has high potential to become an alternative state variable to the electron charge. The implementation of spin based semiconductor devices in integrated circuits requires an all-electrical setup. This comprises injection, manipulation and read-out of the electron spins. Only metallic ferromagnets offer high (Curie) ordering temperatures that actually allow room-temperature operation in spin-dependent transport. Semiconductors in spintronics offer the compelling advantage of bandgap engineering as well as carrier density and carrier type control. Furthermore, spin lifetimes several orders of magnitude larger than for metals make semiconductors outstanding materials for spintronics. Transistors are the core of modern electronics and today form the single most numerously manmade device with a number of the order of 1018 per year. Central functionalities comprise switching and amplification. Hall and Flatté1 have demonstrated the outperformance of spin-lifetime field effect transistors over conventional end-ofroadmap CMOS field effect transistors for low-standby-power devices. Conventional MOSFETs differentiate between on-and off-state by charging or depleting the semiconductor channel. By moving a charge in a MOSFET from one electron reservoir to another, a potential barrier needs to be adjusted in height, enabling current flow in the on-state while in the off-state it restrains leakage currents resulting in static energy dissipation. The dynamic switching process has a theoretical adiabatic limit which is reported2 to require an energy of at least E= kBT …
Publisher:
Publication date:
20 May 2013
Biblio References:
Pages: 328-339
Origin:
Future Trends in Microelectronics