Researchers at the University of Buffalo applied an electrical pulse to transfer spin information from electrons to photons, a technique that potentially could be useful in optical communications over great distances. The method met three crucial criteria — operation at room temperature, no need of magnetic field and the ability for electrical control.
“For decades we were dreaming of and predicting room-temperature spintronic devices beyond magnetoresistance and just storing information. With this team’s discovery, our dreams become reality,” says the study’s co-author, Igor Zutic, SUNY Distinguished Professor of physics at the University at Buffalo.
The research, described in a study published March 27 in Nature, was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Electronics, Photonics and Magnetic Devices (EPMD) program and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program.
The study was led by the Jean Lamour Institute, a joint unit of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Lorraine. Other contributors represent universities and institutes in France, Germany, Japan, China and the United States.
