Scientists 'Waltz' Closer to Using Spintronics in Computing

Aiming to use electron spins for storing, transporting and processing information, researchers from IBM and scientists at ETH Zurich, a leading European university, have revealed the first-ever direct mapping of the formation of a persistent spin helix in a semiconductor.

Until now, it was unclear whether or not electron spins possessed the capability to preserve the encoded information long enough before rotating. Unveiled in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Physics, scientists from IBM Research and the Solid State Physics Laboratory at ETH Zurich demonstrated that synchronizing electrons extends the spin lifetime of the electron by 30 times to 1.1 nanoseconds -- the same time it takes for an existing 1 GHz processor to cycle.