Spintronics or spin-based electronics engineers electronics using the magnetic properties of electrons. The latter behave as small elementary magnets that rotate like a top around an axis, defining their spin. Thus, electrons transport information through direction of their spin. However, as electrons only preserve their spin direction over very short distances, spintronic components must be structured on a nanometric scale. Researchers at the Néel Institute (CNRS-Joseph Fourier University) in Grenoble have just made a breakthrough as they have succeeded in passing a single fullerene molecule in a magnetic state to a non magnetic state by applying voltage.
The scientists managed to engineer a transistor by inserting a single fullerene molecule between two nanometric electrodes. Two electrons were then brought to the molecule. Depending on the applied electric field, the directions of the magnets carried by the electrons are either head-to-tail, and the molecule is not magnetic, or pointed in the same direction, in which case the fullerene molecule becomes magnetic. The research whose results were published last May 29 on the website of Nature clears the way for a field of research called molecular spintronics, an emerging field combining spintronics and molecular electronics. The field should eventually make it possible to design a memory for quantum information and provide increased capacity to hard disks, among others, in race to miniaturize.
