Spintronics : basics and applications

Spintronics is one of the emerging fields focused on next-generation nanoelectronic devices aiming at reduced power consumption and increased memory and processing capabilities. Such devices use not only the electron charge, as traditional electronics does, but also the electron spin as an additional degree of freedom to boost performance. The course provides the basis necessary to understand and describe spin dynamics in solids and nanostructures. The time evolution of the magnetization under the torque generated by magnetic fields and spin currents is presented. Applications to devices as hard disk drive (HDD) and magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) are discussed. Finally, analogies and differences of spin dynamics in 3D/2D vs 0D (qubits) materials are shown.