Fachgruppe Nanostrukturierte Materialien    

This chapter presents the harnessing of the transport phenomena into spintronics nanodevices and discusses microdevices based on tunneling anisotropic magnetoresistance (TAMR) as an example of the potential for fundamentally novel transport phenomena that is offered by ferromagnetic semiconductors (FS). Proper nanodevices including a device that shows the method to obtain large effects by confining the domain walls (DW) between various regions of FS on the nanometer scale are discussed. Multiple devices are discussed along with many of the elements needed as building blocks for eventual spintronics-based information storage and logic paradigms based on encoding the information into the local magnetic state of specific FS device elements. All functional needs of such a device, including information storage and readout, tunable on/off ratios, and electrical control have been demonstrated in device schemes with inter-compatibility. These devices, while for the present confined to laboratory demonstrator status because of material issues with their Curie temperatures (Tc), thus form a solid basis for beginning the elaboration of more complex FS-nanostructure-based circuitry, where the focus begins to shift from the functionality of the individual elements to the interaction of many such elements.