Spintronics - achievements, prospects and challenges

Spintronics utilizes not only the charge of the electrons but also their spin, or resulting magnetization, to realize functional devices of information technologies. In the last decade, spintronics has become a quickly developing research area for solid state scientists. Already, spintronics (or magnetoelectronics) has revolutionized the market for storage devices. Some predicted advantages of the new emerging technology are the nonvolatility of data storage, the increased speed of data processing, the high storage density, and the low energy consumption. To exploit the full potential of spintronics and facilitate design of novel functional devices, it is necessary to exploit the basic physics and progress materials research to find new materials satisfying particular demands. A general understanding of the structure property relationship is a necessary prerequisite for further development of spintronics. In these three lectures, the most important developments in the field of spintronics will be presented and related to the materials science. In particular, the problems connected to spin current such as, magnetoresistance, giant magnetoresistance (GMR), tunneling magnetorestance (TMR), and spin injection from ferromagnetic material will be discussed. In this context, new magnetic materials such as the half-metallic ferromagnets, colossal-magnetoresistance materials, and ferromagnetic semiconductors will be mentioned. Also the challenges connected to the problem of spin transistor and spin manipulation will be discussed. (author)