Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems

Superconducting Spintronics

Mark Blamire

June 16(Thu) - June 16(Thu), 2016

Superconducting Spintronics

Mark Blamire

Department of Materials Science

University of Cambridge

UK

In very simple terms, using the spin of an electron rather than its charge has the potential to substantially lower the energy required to switch a digital device and so reduce the power consumed by large-scale data processing (which is rising significantly). As a result there has been a long-term world-wide interest in spin electronics "spintronics". Although this has yielded many important discoveries, the power cost of generating and transporting spin currents outweighs the power reductions intrinsic to spintronics.

This talk will outline a series of recent breakthrough discoveries which demonstrate that spin currents can be created in superconducting devices and explain how superconducting spintronics is being developed to create practical devices.