COSPINNANO · Coherent spin manipulation in hybrid nanostructures

The rapid development of novel nanoelectronic devices utilizing the spin degree of freedom of the charge carriers and thus reaching beyond the limitations of traditional semiconductor based technologies is one of the central issues in nowadays spintronics. A special emphasis is put on the fabrication and investigation of hybrid nanostructures exploiting the complementary benefits of metallic, semiconducting, magnetic as well as the recently explored, low dimensional carbon based systems (carbon nanotubes, graphen).The proposed project aims to design various hybrid nanostructures defined by optical and electron beam lithography and to develop novel schemes for determining spin-related material parameters (g-factor, spin diffusion length, spin-injection efficiency and spin transfer torque) via transport measurements. This is essential in order to explore electron spin dynamics, decoherence and relaxation for multifunctional applications (fast switching elements, combined logical and storage devices, quantum dot based semiconductor spin qbits) and to determine conditions for coherent spin-transfer in nano/micro-circuits as well as methods of detection of spin currents. These experiments help to understand and control the coherent spin states of individual charge carriers, which is fundamental for the field of quantum computation in a solid state environment.The host institute possesses all the necessary nanofabrication facilities and the high-end cryogenic background for the successful implementation of device fabrication and low-level magnetotransport measurements. The host has also pioneered the measurement technique for determining spin-polarization and spin transfer torque in nanoscale magnetic systems with a resolution down to the scale of atomic junctions.