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Originally published in Science Express on 11 January 2001
Science 2 February 2001:
Vol. 291. no. 5505, pp. 840 - 841
DOI: 10.1126/science.1058371
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Perspectives

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Enhanced Perspectives

SEMICONDUCTORS:
Enhanced: Toward Functional Spintronics

Hideo Ohno

Traditional semiconductor technology is based entirely on exploiting electron charge. Researchers are now investigating ways to use both electronic properties and electron spin simultaneously in semiconductors. The goal is the development of spintronic devices that integrate processing and storage capabilities thus far carried out separately. In his Perspective, Ohno highlights a new material developed by Matsumoto et al., a transparent room-temperature ferromagnetic semiconductor that may in the future be used in integrated circuit-storage-display units, for example, in electronic paper.

The author is in the Laboratory for Electronic Intelligent Systems, Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8577 Japan. E-mail: ohno{at}riec.tohoku.ac.jp

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)