Abstract

This is a relatively new field of research mainly in Physics, Engineering and Material Science (and recently organics!) where people try to make use of the spin of the electron rather then its charge. One of the main advantages is the possibility of information transport ideally without any electrical current, using a pure spin current. This would mean electronics with very low energy dissipation and heat generation, which is one of the main problems in nowadays computers where for example a single processor consumes hundreds of watts of power, RAMs require a constant current not to loose the information, etc.. This issue becomes even bigger when one considers the energy consumption of data centers.

Link to Nature Materials 2012 review paper (http://www.nature.com/nmat/insight/spintronics/index.html). The part on pages 368 – 371 has the most general discussion.