Researchers from EPFL, Université Paris-Sud and Paul Scherrer Institut have discovered that a common transparent insulating material, which is normally a non-conductor of electricity, demonstrates the properties of a spintronic conductor.
This material may also help to observe the elusive, Majorana fermion particle.
Electrons possess a quantum property known as spin, and spin-based electronics or spintronics makes use of this property.
Spintronic circuits require methods to manage the electron spin without disturbing it with the electron charge. Electron spin exists in the clockwise rotation or the counter-clockwise of the electron around its axis, and provides the magnetic properties of the electrons.
Information can be encoded in the various directions of spin and this phenomena could help to develop microelectronics with spin-dependent effects. However controlling electron spin has been a difficult task to achieve so far.
The collaborative group of researchers made use of the SARPES method in order to study the transparent insulating material which possessed spin-dependent properties. They found that strontium titanate (SrTiO3) had electron gas at its surface which was spin-polarized.
What is Quantum Mechanical Spin?
This allows the electron spin to be controlled and also provides proof of large spin polarization on an insulating substrate. This finding can help to develop spin-polarized materials which are not affected by non-spin polarized electrical charges.
Majorana fermion particles possess zero spin, zero moment and zero energy. They may help to build very stable quantum computers as they would not be affected by any external noise or interference. The strontium titanate material can help study these elusive Majorana fermion particles.