Spintronics - Page 2

Researchers from the University of Utah have developed two spintronics devices based on perovskite materials. The researchers used these new devices to demonstrate the high potential of perovksites for spintronics systems. This is a followup to the exciting results announced in 2017 by the same group that showed advantages of perovskites for spintronics.

The researchers used an organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite material with a heavy lead atom that features strong spin-orbit coupling and a long injected spin lifetime. The first device was a spintronic LED, which worked with a magnetic electrode instead of an electron-hole electrode. The perovskite LED lights up with circularly polarized electroluminescence.

Researchers at Cornell used theoretical techniques to predict that using intense mid-infrared laser light on a titanium perovskite can dynamically induce a magnetic phase transition ' taking the material from its ferromagnetic ground state to a hidden anti-ferromagnetic phase. This dramatic shift could have useful applications, particularly in optical information processing.

'It would be a kind of optical switch,' the researchers said. 'You have a material where it's magnetic and 'non-magnetic.' It's going between those two states with light'.

Researchers from the University of Utah discovered that organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites feature two contradictory properties - easily controlled electron spin and long spin lifetime (up to a nanosecond). This is a unique combination of two highly sought after properties for spintronics devices.

The specific material used in this research is the hybrid perovskite methyl-ammonium lead iodine (CH3NH3PbI3). In their study, a thin film of this material was placed in front of an ultrafast laser that was used to set the electron's spin orientation and also observe the spin precession.