A variable temperature and variable magnetic field (VT-VMF) platform for development of spintronic memory and display

自旋电子学和有机电子学是现代电子学的两个新兴前沿。自旋电子学的目标是利用半导体中载流子的自旋状态（而不是它们的电荷）来实现新的器件功能。其中包括低功耗计算、非易失性存储器和超灵敏磁场传感器。另一方面，有机电子学提供了机械柔性、光学活性和廉价的器件，这些器件在便携式“卷起”显示器和照明、电子纸、智能卡、有机标签和标记、智能纺织品、太阳能电池和电池中有无数的应用。本研究计画的目标是整合自旋电子学与有机电子学，以实现联合收割机结合这两个领域优点的装置。第一种是基于纳米线的有机磁性随机存取存储器（纳米线OMRAM），它将是廉价的，可移植的，超轻的，灵活的，并具有高的数据存储密度。该器件可以与无数有机电子应用（如上所述）无缝集成，以实现智能功能。第二种器件是纳米线自旋电子OLED（有机发光二极管），与传统OLED相比，它将更加明亮和节能。这将对电池供电的有机LED应用产生巨大的影响，如手机显示屏和PDA屏幕。阿尔伯塔大学的Nanofab提供制造和表征有机电子器件所需的设备。在这里，我们要求一个可变温度和可变磁场（VT-VMF）平台来表征自旋电子器件。这将补充和加强阿尔伯塔大学现有的纳米技术研究设施。

Spintronics and organic electronics are two emerging frontiers of modern electronics. Spintronics aims to harness the spin state of carriers (instead of their charge) in semiconductors to realize novel device functionalities. These include low power computing, non-volatile memories and ultra-sensitive magnetic field sensors. Organic electronics, on the other hand, offers mechanically flexible, optically active and inexpensive devices, which have found myriad applications in portable "roll up" displays and lighting, electronic papers, smart cards, organic labels and tags, smart textiles, solar cells and batteries. The goal of the proposed research program is to integrate spintronics and organic electronics to realize devices which combine the advantages of these two areas.Here we propose two distinct  "organic spintronic" devices. The first one is a nanowire based organic magnetic random access memory (nanowire OMRAM) which will be inexpensive, ultrathin, ultralight, flexible and possess high data storage density. This device can be integrated seamlessly with innumerable organic electronics applications (as mentioned above) to realize smart functionalities. The second device is a nanowire spintronic OLED (organic light emitting diode), which will be much brighter and energy efficient compared to conventional OLEDs. This will have immense impact on the battery powered organic LED applications such as cell-phone displays and PDA screens.Facilities required for fabricating and characterizing organic electronic devices are available at the Nanofab in the University of Alberta. Here we request a Variable temperature and Variable Magnetic field (VT-VMF) platform to characterize spintronic devices. This will complement and strengthen the existing nanotechnology research facility (Nanofab) at the University of Alberta.