SAITOH Spin Quantum Rectification

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Research Director: Eiji SAITOH
(Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo)
Research Term: Nov 2014 - Mar 2020
Special Extension Period: Apr 2020 - Mar 2021
Grant Number: JPMJER1402

 

Spintronics has attracted much attention as a new direction of electronics. While conventional electronics only uses electron charge, spintronics uses electron spin which is a self-rotating property like a spinning top. A flow of spin, called ‘spin current’, has used to realize magnetoresistive random access memories (MRAM), which can significantly reduce the power consumption, and quantum information transmission. Recently, it is being expected that spin current can also develop various applications such as energy conversion techniques.

The electron spin in magnets keeps rotating in a same direction, which enables us to rectify various fluctuations such as heat in matters. In this research area, we focus on the rectifying functionality of spin in order to reveal and exploit the most essential features of spin and spin current. The functionality will be a key to construct principles to utilize fluctuations in matters and to control flows of mechanical, electromagnetic, and thermal energies using electron spin. We also try to construct a new paradigm of physics in matter by expanding quantum mechanics which describes microscopic spins in matter to mechanics which can also describe influence of motions of the body itself. Spin dynamos, quantum motors, and spin circuit technologies will be developed based on this physics mechanism, and new spin science for energy conversion will be built. The research also contains construction of physics theory for conversion of spin into mechanical motion, which was impossible using only conventional electronics, and development of materials and device structures. After this research, new fields of science for energy conversion and information processing inside materials using electron spin will be established as ‘spin quantum rectification’. In accordance with the concept, we will develop technologies to exploit the best of electron spin’s ability.

 

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