Current Research Interests
- Magnetic tunnel junctions
- Half-metallic rutile structures
- Transport through organic semiconductors
- "Spin filter" tunneling
- Inelastic tunneling spectroscopy
- Light-assisted tunneling
- High field superconductivity
Still interested? We are always in need of more able minds and bodies ... graduate, undergraduate, or other!
Most of what we do relates to the relatively new field of "spin electronics." In recent years, there has been an enormous interest in so-called ?spin electronics? devices, driven by a rising demand for ultra-high density magnetic storage and non-volatile magnetic memories. These devices utilize the fundamental principle that electrons carry not only charge, the property exploited in traditional semiconductor devices, but also spin. In semiconductor devices, an electric field is used to control the transport of conduction electrons, and hence, electric currents. In magnetic materials, where spin up and spin down electron populations are unequal, an electric current will similarly be spin polarized. In this case, a magnetic field can be used to manipulate spin polarized electrical currents, providing an additional channel of information as well as an additional degree of freedom for designing novel devices. Spin polarized transport, however, relies crucially on electrons retaining their spin information within the device structure. This is where we come in: how to generate highly spin polarized currents, maintain them, and maniuplate them.
You can see the slides from a few fairly general talk I gave recently here. One of these talks was aimed at undergraduate physics majors, the other at a general lay-audience.