Researchers craft all-electric spintronics, vie for guest spot on Mindfreak
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 4th 2009 11:01PM
posted Nov 4th 2009 11:01PM
Unfortunately for us, we've no certified rocket scientist on staff. That said, we're absolutely convinced that the whiz-kids over at the University of Cincinnati are more than up to the task of improving a science that may or may not actually be useful in real things before 3028. As we continue to hear more about spintronics (described as "transistors that function by controlling an electron's spin instead of its charge"), a team of UC researchers have stumbled upon a novel way to control an electron's spin orientation using purely electrical means. In fact, one member calls this discovery the "holy grail of semiconductor spintronics," though we're guessing it'll still be a few 
He looks like a yellow shirt from Star Trek...
I thought it WAS a yellow shirt from Star Trek when I looked at it quickly.
Hmmmm, I think I'll skip Win7 and Snow Leopard and just wait until this is used in computers
What an amazing advancement we've made.
That's my college! For the win!
Uh, using QPCs as spin valves isn't anything new. Maybe they figured out a way to choose the polarization, but putting a polarized spin current into a 2DEG channel has been done before.
Yeah, that's what I thought, too... No I didn't. I didn't really understand one bit of what you said.
Could you paraphrase, and perhaps illustrate with some xkcd-like drawings? Seriously? This stuff is FM technology (the 'M' is for 'magic', you fill in the rest...)
I'm guessing they used a magnetic field to do this.
Manipulating an electron's charge is so last year.
Um, electron charge is a fundamental physical constant.
No you can so change it all you need to do is catch an electron and slap it real hard with a magnetic monopole and that will manipulate the charge. It is really easy just try it and you will see what I am saying.
Fundamental law... Nerd burn. Nice!
I think you mean manipulating its spin...
Here I will help you see what I am saying because reading troubles you "transistors that function by controlling an electron's spin instead of its charge"
spintronics, as seen first on FOX news.
Electron spin, election spin, what's the difference?
Personally, I like the potential increase in code efficiency that could come from trinary instead of binary. If you use the electron spin to determine the bit value, then you can have top spin=0, bottom spin=1, and neutral spin=2. Unfortunately, neutral is extremely difficult to maintain.
Actually, that won't work, because the electron is a spin 1/2 particle. That means it can be spin up (+1/2) or spin down (-1/2) only...no neutral at all. It's not just difficult to maintain, the laws of physics tell us that it's impossible.
Now, if these were photons, you'd be right...