Press releases
Please quote Nature Materials as the source of these items.
September 2003
Room-temperature spintronics
In today's information world, bits of data are processed by semiconductor chips, and stored in magnetic disk drives. But tomorrow's information technology may see magnetism and semiconductivity combined in one 'spintronic' device that exploits both charge and 'spin' to carry data. In the October issue of Nature Materials, Rao and colleagues describe a material — known as a dilute magnetic semiconductor — that displays the desired semiconducting and magnetic properties, and, crucially, does so when operating above room temperature.
In today's information world, bits of data are processed by semiconductor chips, and stored in magnetic disk drives. But tomorrow's information technology may see magnetism and semiconductivity combined in one 'spintronic' device that exploits both charge and 'spin' to carry data. In the October issue of Nature Materials, Rao and colleagues describe a material — known as a dilute magnetic semiconductor — that displays the desired semiconducting and magnetic properties, and, crucially, does so when operating above room temperature.
Rao and colleagues report the first observations of ferromagnetism above room temperature in ZnO doped with Mn — in bulk, thin film or powder form. The authors attribute their success to the low temperatures used to fabricate the material; samples synthesized at higher temperatures were not ferromagnetic at room temperature. The possibility of using electric and magnetic fields (as well as light) to process and store information in these materials makes future spintronic devices based on Mn-doped ZnO very attractive.
Ferromagnetism above room temperature in bulk and transparent thin films of Mn-doped ZnO pp673-677
Parmanand Sharma, Amita Gupta, K. V. Rao, Frank J. Owens, Renu Sharma, Rajeev Ahuja, J. M. Osorio Guillen, Börje Johansson and G. A. Gehring
Published online: 21 September 2003 | doi 10.1038/nmat984
