University of Twente and FOM Foundation researchers have succeeded in transferring magnetic information directly into a semiconductor at room temperature via a layer of aluminum oxide less than one namometer thick, bringing spintronics* within reach.

The main advantage of spintronics technology is reduced heat and power consumption in chips.

* Unlike conventional electronics, which employs the charge of the electron and its transport, spintronics exploits another important property of the electron: spin (points either up or down). In magnetic materials, the spin orientation can be used to store a bit of information as a 1 or 0.