Scientists have made a breakthrough in the development of a new generation of electronics that will require less power and generate less heat.
Scientists have made a breakthrough in the development of a new generation of electronics that will require less power and generate less heat.
It involves exploiting the complex quantum properties of electrons – in this case, the spin state of electrons.
In a world first, the researchers - led by a team of physicists from the University of Leeds - have announced in the journal Science Advances that they have created a ‘spin capacitor’ that is able to generate and hold the spin state of electrons for a number of hours.
Previous attempts have only ever held the spin state for a fraction of a second.
In electronics, a capacitor holds energy in the form of electric charge. A spin capacitor is a variation on that idea: instead of holding just charge, it also stores the spin state of a group of electrons – in effect it ‘freezes’ the spin position of each of the electrons.
Read more at University of Leeds
Image: The top image shows a sample of the advanced material undergoing analysis by muon spectroscopy. A muon is a sub-atomic particle. CREDIT: University of Leeds
