Bell Communications Research Inc, owned by the US Baby Bells, claims to have built an all-metal microelectronic storage device that could replace silicon transistors in memory chips. The non-volatile bipolar spin switch, reported in the journal Science, requires a much simpler production process involving a sandwich of magnetic alloys with a thin ferro-magnetic gold alloy in the middle. When a current is applied to the gold film, direction of spin of electrons in the device can be switched up or down. Moreover the devices seem to perform better the more they are miniaturised. The devices are also much smaller and use a lot less power than semiconductor devices.
