Electrons carry both charge and spin but conventional electronnics ignores the spin and acts only on their charge state to move electrons. Spin electronics (or spintronics), closely associated to the development of nanomagnetism, fully exploits the spin states of electrons to open a new paradifm in electonics promising innovative devices with reduced energy consumption.

Spin electronics, usually called spintronics, is on of the research topics allowingC’Nano IdF teams to build relationships with numerous academic teams all over the world as well as with french and foreign industrial partners. The manifestation of electron spins at a macroscopic level is the well-known magnetization of a magnetic material use to store information. Fostered by major discoveries in the past two decades, recognized by the 2007 Physics nobel Prize, a nex electronics emerges aiming at mastering spin and charge currents in devices compatible with conventional high density microelectronics.Magnetic memories - the MRAM - are such an example.
Under strong development, this "spin electronics" is now progressing towards hybrid nanodevices combining metals, semiconductors, and ferromagnetic as well as ferroelectric oxides with numerous applications foreseen in the field of storage, eletronics, optoelectronics, and last but not least spin-based quantum information.