Ultrafast spintronics

Spintronics (short for spin-based electronics) deals with the development of new microelectronic devices, which are based on spin rather than the charge of particles as a carrier for information. Possible advantages of spintronic devices compared to conventional ones would be an increased data processing speed, less power consumption, higher integration densities, and new functionalities.

Semiconductors are suitable spintronic materials because of their widespread industrial use and the resulting know-how in fabrication techniques. Therefore, magnetic semiconductors seem to be the best choice to reach one important goal in spintronics, which is the design of a single device, which incorporates both logic and memory elements ("single chip computer").

We investigate magnetic semiconductors with a wide bandgap, i.e. "transparent magnets". Using time-resolved Faraday rotation spectroscopy [1-6], ultrafast carrier- and spin-based processes in these new materials are studied.

[1] K. Whitaker et al., Nano Lett. 11, 3355 (2011)

[2] M. Krauß et al., Phys. Rev. B 81, 035213 (2010)

[3] W. Zawadzki et al., Phys. Rev. B 78, 245203 (2008)

[4] N. Janßen et al., Nano Lett. 8, 1991 (2008)

[5] Z. Chen et al., Nature Physics 3, 265 (2007)

[6] M. Raskin et al., Phys. stat. sol. (b) (2014)