A new spin on battery technology
Researchers at the Universties of Miami, Tokyo and Tohoku have discovered a new form of battery. Charged by the application of a very strong magnetic field, the Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) contains a set of nano-magnets--zones some 5 nanometers across in a zinc-gallium-arsenic-mangnesium matrix--which absorb energy and then release it over time.
What may be much more interesting than just power storage is the fact, mentioned almost in passing in the press release, that the current delivered by the MTJ is spin-polarized; the electrons are predominately spinning in one direction.
That's hot news for spintronics, which we've covered previously and which, together with graphene, has the most exciting potential for fundamentally new computational devices.
Spin logic could work much faster at much lower power than even today's finest electronics, because it doesn't rely on currents flowing and the consequent unavoidable loss.
And, as the researchers say, if this discovery leads to new insights into basic magnetic theory, there are almost no limits to how profoundly it could affect modern life. Which is a bit over the top--just not that much.
This article was first published as a blog post on ZDNet UK.