Transistors Switch onto Spin Using the spin of an electron in addition to, or instead of, the charge properties is believed to have many benefits in terms of speed, power-cost, and integration density over conventional electronic circuits. At the heart of the field of spintronics has been a proposed spin-analog of the electronic transistor, the spin field effect transistor. Koo et al. (p. 1515 ) demonstrate the injection and detection of spin between two ferromagnetic contacts and show how the magnitude of the spin-current between the source and drain contacts can be controlled by a voltage applied to a gate. The results present an experimental realization of the concepts described for the spin-transistor.

Control of Spin Precession in a Spin-Injected Field Effect Transistor