Breakthrough in spintronics research could aid semiconductor industry

In a collaborative effort, scientists led by ECE’s Professor Jian-Ping Wang and Daniel Gopman of the National Institute of Standards and Technology have successfully demonstrated a breakthrough process to develop spintronic devices. The new process has the potential to make scalable spintronic applications more accessible. The researchers have overcome the constraints presented by cobalt iron boron by using iron palladium, which consumes less energy and can be scaled down to less than five nanometers. 

Commenting on the research, Professor and Robert F. Hartmann Chair Jian-Ping Wang, who is also a senior author on the paper says: “We believe we’ve found a material and a device that will allow the semiconducting industry to move forward with more opportunities in spintronics that weren’t there before for memory and computing applications. Spintronics is incredibly important for building microelectronics with new functionalities.”

The details of the research are published in Advanced Functional Materials, a premier materials science journal, under the title, “Sputtered L1o-FePD and its synthetic antiferromagnet on Si/SiO2 wafers for scalable spintronics.” 

Learn more about the impact of the research on the semiconductor industry in the news post by the College of Science and Engineering.

Read the journal article “Sputtered L10-FePd and its Synthetic Antiferromagnet on Si/SiO2 Wafers for Scalable Spintronics,” at the Wiley Online Library.