Information technologies are expected to consume about 20-25% of electricity in the world by 2025. This makes the development of new nanoelectronic "green" devices essential. Spintronics is the area of nanolectronics that exploits not only the electron charge, but also its spin, i.e. its intrinsic angular momentum. Spintronic devices are one of the most promising technologies to overcome some of these future challenges. These devices are non-volatile (the information is retained without powering the device), compatibile with seminconductor technologies, and can be operated a large number of times without degradation. However, the same as other areas of nanoelectronics, for future spintronic devices to have a great impact, they will need to have ultra-high capacity for storage and processing, as well as very large inter-device interconnectivity, something very challenging.
In this project, we are investigating new three-dimensional spintronic devices for applications in green computing. These systems have the potential of storing, processing and transmitting data across the whole space, instead of being limited to a single plane, as it is the case in conventional planar technologies. For this ambitious objective, we are developing complex 3D nanofabrication and characterization methods which create and probe complex 3D nanomagnets. Our final goal is to create fundamental knowledge that allows to generate more robust and efficient mechanisms for applications in computing.