Quantum computing… here we go?

Physorg.com reports on a breakthrough by the University of Delaware and Cambridge NanoTech in their experiments regarding ’spintronics’, or the ability to use information about electron spin in atoms of silicon to encode information, much like we use information about an electron’s charge state in computers today.

Whereas semiconductors nowadays operate on binary bits, which are represented by manipulating the charge of electrons in a silicon wafer (‘on’ or ‘off’, ‘true’ or ‘false’), ’spintronics’ research hopes to usher in a new age of computer speed and performance by measuring and even controlling the angular momentum displayed by all electrons, and using this information to encode data.

The website reports that researchers for the first time successfully conducted the spin of electrons in a custom-made silicon chip, a process known as ’spin transport’.

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