Single electron spintronics

Single electron electronics is now well developed, and allows the manipulation of electrons one-by-one as they tunnel on and off a nanoscale conducting island. In the past decade or so, there have been concerted efforts in several laboratories to construct single electron devices incorporating ferromagnetic components in order to introduce spin functionality. The use of ferromagnetic electrodes with a non-magnetic island can lead to spin accumulation on the island. On the other hand, making the dot also ferromagnetic introduces new physics such as tunnelling magnetoresistance enhancement in the cotunnelling regime and manifestations of the Kondo effect. Such nanoscale islands are also found to have long spin lifetimes. Conventional spintronics makes use of the average spin-polarization of a large ensemble of electrons: this new approach offers the prospect of accessing the quantum properties of the electron, and is a candidate approach to the construction of solid-state spin-based qubits.