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Nanoelectronics

Spin surprise in carbon

Nature volume 452, pages 419–420 (2008)Cite this article

Spintronics is an emerging branch of electronics that exploits electrons' spin, rather than charge. In carbon nanotubes, the coupling of this spin with electron motion could offer a desirable way to control quantum information.

Electrons have an electrical charge and a spin — an intrinsic angular momentum as if the electron were spinning around its own axis. The spin adopts one of two states, the manipulation and detection of which forms the basis of a branch of electronics known as spintronics. If the spin interacts with electron motion, it can cause the spin to change state, leading to loss of information in a spintronics device. In carbon, these spin–orbit interactions were thought to be weak, making the material ideal for sending spin information over long distances. In this issue, McEuen and colleagues1 (page 448) show that in carbon nanotubes, spin and orbital motion are more strongly coupled than previously thought. Far from being a bad thing, this opens up new possibilities for manipulating electron spin.

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Figure 1: Spin–orbit coupling of electrons in carbon nanotubes.

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  1. Arne Brataas is in the Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway. arne.brataas@ntnu.no,

    Arne Brataas

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  1. Arne Brataas
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Brataas, A. Spin surprise in carbon. Nature 452, 419–420 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/452419a

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