India, April 24 -- What Is Spintronics?

Spintronics, also known as spin electronics, is a rapidly developing field that explores the potential of utilising the spin of electrons in solid-state devices.

Spin is one of the three inherent qualities possessed by electrons. Along with mass and charge, electrons also spin around its axis. This is not a 'spin' in the classical rotation-on-axis sense; it is an orientation and can be either 'up' or 'down'. This property is termed as electron spin.

While traditional electronics rely solely on an electron's charge to encode information, spintronics incorporates an electron's spin state as an additional degree of freedom for data storage and manipulation.

By manipulating the spin orientation of e...