Applications of spin dependent transport materials

Newly developed materials that exhibit large changes in effective resistance with applied fields are being put to practical use. Magnetic multilayers with giant magnetoresistance (GMR) and spin dependent tunnelling (SDT) structures are being used in magnetic field sensors. Spin valves are being sold in read heads for hard drives and galvanic isolators. Both spin valves and SDT structures are being used in non-volatile random access memory development. After a brief introduction to these materials, the development of their uses in sensors, read heads, isolators and non-volatile memory are summarized. GMR magnetic field sensors represent a small, but growing market. SDT sensors have the potential to sense very small fields (to 1 pT). Spin valve read heads have enabled very high aerial packing densities for hard drives, up to 24 Gbits per square inch. GMR isolators can be used to duplicate the function of opto-isolators, but at much higher speeds and packing densities. Application of these materials to non-volatile random access memory could result in speeds and densities of semiconductor memory with the non-volatility of hard disk drives. Future directions in this field indicate a merging of semiconductor and these new magnetic materials.