Perspective on field-effect spin-transistors

A new class of spin transistors referred to as spin metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (spin MOSFET) is a candidate for the fundamental building block of novel integrated circuts employing spin degrees of freedom. The most attractive feature of the spin MOSFET is spin-related transport phenomena in its output characteristics, i.e., magnetization-configuration-dependent output currents. Furthermore, the spin MOSFET can exhibit excellent performance as a transistor and would have excellent compatibility with present silicon technology. These features make the spin MOSFET attractive for new nonvolatile memory and reconfigurable logic architectures that are inaccessible to ordinary transistor circuits. Transistor performance of the spin MOSFET, such as propagation delay time, switching energy, and stand-by power, is not superior to ordinary MOSFETs on device level. However, the circuit performance would be dramatically improved by introducing spin degrees of freedom into integrated circuits. (c) 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim