an international team of physicists has announced discovery of a new spintronic effect in semiconductor chips the intrinsic spin hall effect which puts a new twist on future technology and the possibility for novel circuits with low energy consumption the team includes physicists dr jörg wunderlich and dr bernd kaestner from the hitachi cambridge laboratory uk; professor tomás jungwirth from the institute of physics of the academy of sciences of the czech republic and the university of nottingham uk; and professor jairo sinova from texas a&m university usa in a normal hall effect a voltage is created perpendicular to an electric current as it flows through a conductor in a magnetic field the magnetic field deflects the moving charges to the sides of the conductor resulting in an observable hall voltage a different type of hall phenomenon the spin hall effect was first predicted in 1971 here the moving electrons which carry with them a tiny magnet called the spin collide with impurities and deflect to the right or left depending on the orientation of their spin these collisions generate opposing magnetizations at the conductors edges despite its intriguing ramifications the theory disappeared into virtual obscurity until 1999 when it was rediscovered and further elaborated four years later two independent teams one including sinova and jungwirth proposed a novel mechanism called the intrinsic spin hall effect in which similar magnetization occurs without the need for collisions the prediction touched off a theoretical firestorm resulting in more than 50 articles arguing for and against the possibility as the heated debate raged on wunderlich and kaestner developed a new type of device to measure magnetization at each side of a high-mobility ultra-thin conducting layer embedded within a semiconductor chip using built-in light-emitting diodes armed with this novel tool wunderlich and kaestner teamed with jungwirth and sinova to observe the spin hall effect their findings will be featured the february issue of physics today along with an independent and parallel observation of the effect in conventional bulk semiconductors team members say the more than 10 times larger signal detected in the hitachi device can be attributed to the special layered design of the semiconductor chip that yielded operation in a regime close to the intrinsic spin hall effect they are both beautiful experiments and one of the most remarkable aspects is that they seem to be exploring opposite regimes sinova adds the possibility of generating magnetization without circulating currents has great implications in many areas most notably the design of information processing and storage devices obviously we are only at the beginning of this journey of discovery sinova explains as you gather more facts the truth tends to reveal itself thats the fun of science were seeking to know and were learning in the process for a full description of the work please see: http://arxivorg/abs/cond-mat/0410295 [to be published in february in physical review letters vol 94 (2005)] -atm- contact: shana k hutchins (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@sciencetamuedu or or dr jairo sinova (979) 845-4179 or sinova@physicstamuedu