Ultra-Sensitive Spin Dependent Tunneling Devices Without Biasing

The popularity of nanotechnology symbolizes a rapid shrinking of physical dimensions in solid state devices. However, the diminishing sizes will eventually lead to problems including thermal instability. Our proposed proprietary approach takes advantagesof the nanometer-size especially for magnetic portions of the devices. This approach will work until the lateral dimensions of the devices become less than about 10 nm. This is many generations beyond the state of the art photolithography capability (100nm for year 2001) spearheaded by the semiconductor industry. The final device will have hysteresis free output with very high sensitivity, requires no biasing thus very-low power consumption, be very small in sizes, and never change after excursion fields.In the Phase I, NVE and MINT/UA have developed the basic materials and processes for this technology. In the Phase II we will develop prototype devices using this material and using microelectronics fabrication techniques that are suitable for massproduction. The devices will be especially suitable for low field and low power applications such as solid state compass, magnetic medium detection, nondestructive evaluation, biomedical chips, and remote sensing.