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Magneto-electronics, the science underlying a new generation of semiconductor technology, is an important new development enabling the industry to meet emerging challenges. Devices that rely on an electron's spin to perform their functions form the foundation of spintronics - short for spin based electronics and also know as magneto-electronics.
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| Until now information processing technology has relied on charge based devices, ranging from vacuum tubes to today's million-transistor chips. These conventional electronic devices move electric charges around ignoring the spin of each electron. Electron spin is closely related to magnetism. |
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| It is no surprise therefore that the information storage industry has provided the initial successes in magneto-electronics. Most laptop computers now have high density hard drives that store huge amounts of data in every square millimetre. The drives rely on a magneto-electronic effect, giant magnetoresistance (GMR), to read such densely stored data. |
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| New storage technologies based on magneto-electronics are being introduced. One such technology, MRAM a high speed non-volatile memory chip will require no power to store the data making it ideal for mobile computing applications. Sensors based on the technology are also being used in the latest electronic laden automobiles. |
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| The key to the manufacture of these devices has been the development of highly magnetoresistive thin films, namely giant magnetoresistance (GMR), and the related spin valve sandwich in metallic multilayered and magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) structures. The most basic construction a simple spin valve structure consisting of three layers, two ferromagnetic layers with a metal layer between them. The MTJs are sandwiches of two ferromagnetic layers separated by a thin insulating layer. |
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| In both cases one of the ferromagnetic layers is pinned by exchange bias to an antiferromagnetic layer. |
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| This pinning of one of the ferromagnetic layers is achieved by annealing the layer in a magnetic field at a specified temperature. This annealing process aligns the spin of the electrons in the pinned layer in one direction. |
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| The MRT Series of magnetic annealing systems is used throughout the data storage and semiconductor industry in this step of the production of magneto-electronic devices. |
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