When we think of mobile devices, we imagine being able to go wherever we want with them and not being limited by the length of their electric power cords or chargers. While this is possible to some extent, most laptop computers won’t last more than a few hours before being having to be tethered back to the wall. Imagine being able to use the same devices with the same batteries for 10 hours longer. That’s what Dr. Amos Sharoni of Bar-Ilan University hopes to achieve with the use of spintronics.
Spintronics or spin transport electronics (also known as magnetoelectronics) is a field of nanotechnology that exploits the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment. This technology has the potential to make batteries last for 10 hours longer and make processors work 10 times faster. The result would be much more energy-efficient mobile devices, computers and appliances.
Spintronics is an emerging technology, and the 38-year-old Dr. Sharoni is working out of Bar-Ilan’s brand new nano center. As a condensed matter physicist, Dr. Sharoni also held a position in the University of California, San Diego. He is now set to continue his projects in Ramat Gan, just outside of Tel Aviv.
The technology does not only apply to mobile devices. About 40 percent of electricity is lost before it even gets to the average home. Dr. Sharoni is working to help prevent that loss by investigating better ways to conduct electricity. Currently, superconductors are one step closer to achieving this except that they have to be super-cooled, making them inefficient.
Resistance-free conduction at room temperature is theoretically impossible, but the properties of matter change when working on a nano scale.
Scientists like Dr. Sharoni needed only to look at things from a different perspective in order to achieve what was once thought to be impossible. “I am trying to look at how the physics changes when you don’t make a big piece of material, but when you look at a small portion of it. At the nano scale it looks different and it is different,” says Dr. Sharoni.
View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Technology.