Can spintronic field effect transistors compete with their electronic counterparts?

TL;DR

This paper critically evaluates the potential of spintronic field effect transistors to outperform electronic transistors, concluding that current limitations in materials prevent them from being competitive in speed and power efficiency.

Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive analysis showing that without materials with extremely strong spin orbit interaction, spintronic devices cannot surpass electronic counterparts, and some modifications worsen performance.

Findings

Spintronic devices are unlikely to outperform electronic transistors with current materials.

Proposed modifications to spin FETs can lead to worse performance than original designs.

Strong spin orbit interaction materials are essential for competitive spintronic devices.

Abstract

Current interest in spintronics is largely motivated by a belief that spin based devices (e.g. spin field effect transistors) will be faster and consume less power than their electronic counterparts. Here we show that this is generally untrue. Unless materials with extremely strong spin orbit interaction can be developed, the spintronic devices will not measure up to their electronic cousins. We also show that some recently proposed modifications of the original spin field effect transistor concept of Datta and Das [Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 56, 665 (1990)] actually lead to worse performance than the original construct.