Spin-dependent phenomena and their implementation in spintronic devices

The general purpose of spinelectronis is to take advantage of the spin of electrons in addition to their charge to obtain new phenomena and conceive innovative electronic components. The first application of spinelectronics is in magnetoresistive heads for computer disk drives based on the giant magnetoresistance phenomenon. The discovery of tunnel magnetoresistance in magnetic tunnel junctions has allowed the emergence of a new kind of non-volatile memory called magnetic random access memory (MRAM). It potentially combines the advantages of all existing memories: non-volatility of FLASH, speed of SRAM, density of DRAM, hardness to ionizing radiations and endurance. Many research groups are nowadays investigating the use of these magnetic components for other logic applications. Spintronic phenomenon is the spin transfer effect allows controlling the magnetization of a magnetic nanostructure directly with a spin-polarized current. It attracts a considerable interest since it provides a new write scheme in MRAM and allows conceiving frequency tunable RF components.