The first 70 years of spintronics
Prof. Ferenc Simon
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Budapest University of Technology and Economics and UND
Spintronics wishes to use the intrinsic angular momentum, or spin, of electrons to manipulate and store information, and for field sensing. I review the early history of spin and show that spintronics dates back to the seminal discovery of spin diffusion by Kittel and coworkers in 1952, in an experiment explained by Freeman Dyson. Modern spintronics owes its existence to the observation of giant magnetoresistance by Fert and Grünberg, which led to the present wide range of existing and emerging applications. I discuss some fundamental spintronics-relevant phenomena, including spin diffusion, relaxation, and spin-transfer torque. Since efficient spintronics devices rely on materials with long spin relaxation times, the search for such materials has become a central challenge—often regarded as the holy grail of the field. I demonstrate that graphite, a well-known but recently rediscovered material, is a probable candidate for this [1,2].
[1] B. G. Markus et al. Nat. Commun. 14, 2831 (2023).
[2] B. G. Markus et al. arXiv:2503.07899