Colloquium

Coherent Spin-Dependent Tunneling and Spintronics

Gang Xiao
Physics Department
Brown University
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Higgins 310, 4 pm

Spintronics is an emerging technological discipline which has leveraged the charge and spin properties of electrons to develop a new generation of electronic devices with novel and enhanced performance. Spintronics research has enabled development in many cutting-edge research areas, such as quantum computing and quantum communications. Even today, the spintronic technologies of giant magnetoresistance and magnetic tunnel junctions, have found widespread application in the fields of information storage, nonvolatile memory, and magnetic field sensing. In this talk, I will present an exciting recent development in spintronics. By utilizing single crystal or highly textured tunneling barrier, the tunneling matrix elements for the electron wavefunctions can be modified to generate extremely large magnetoresistance. I will show that this so-called coherent magnetic tunneling will have significant impact on technology and on our understanding of spin-dependent transport.