They may become an important class of materials for spintronics. In spintronic devices the spin degree of freedom is exploited for function in addition to the electron charge. The latter is conventionally used in today's CMOS electronics. To make spintronics work and a superior form of electronics you have to be able to create, maintain, and manipulate spin-polarized currents. Obviously semiconductors play an important role in today's electronics. It is intuitive to assume that one can obtain additional functionality if you have a semiconductor material which allows for manipulation of injected spin-polarized currents. Therefore you have to have a ferromagnetic semiconductor at room temperature and you want still to be able to p and n dope it. Indeed as you mentioned in your question, energy consumption is the major bottleneck for today's CMOS electronics. Spintronics provides architectures which allow for dramatic reduction in energy consumption which in turn allows to proceed with miniaturization in accordance with Moore's law. Ferromagnetic semiconductors are not the only approach to achieve advantages expected for future spintronics. Today there is also substantial effort to create voltage-controlled spintronics where no currents are involved and thus Joule heating can be virtualy avoided.

They may become an important class of materials for spintronics. In spintronic devices the spin degree of freedom is exploited for function in addition to the electron charge. The latter is conventionally used in today's CMOS electronics. To make spintronics work and a superior form of electronics you have to be able to create, maintain, and manipulate spin-polarized currents. Obviously semiconductors play an important role in today's electronics. It is intuitive to assume that one can obtain additional functionality if you have a semiconductor material which allows for manipulation of injected spin-polarized currents. Therefore you have to have a ferromagnetic semiconductor at room temperature and you want still to be able to p and n dope it. Indeed as you mentioned in your question, energy consumption is the major bottleneck for today's CMOS electronics. Spintronics provides architectures which allow for dramatic reduction in energy consumption which in turn allows to proceed with miniaturization in accordance with Moore's law. Ferromagnetic semiconductors are not the only approach to achieve advantages expected for future spintronics. Today there is also substantial effort to create voltage-controlled spintronics where no currents are involved and thus Joule heating can be virtualy avoided.

Dear Dr. Taher,

The diluted magnetic semiconductors are semiconductors doped with rare earth materials to give the semiconductors in addition to their distinguished electronic and optical properties magnetic properties.

The electronic devices concept in semiconductors is based on controlling the electrons and holes in the semiconductor either their number or their speed.So, one could produce the well known controlled devices such as the transistors which can be made to operate as switch or to operate as amplifier. The control of the electrical charge is accomplished by electric field. So, this is a direct way to build controlled devices. Magnetic field can be used to control the motion of charged particles but they must be in the state of motion according to Lorenz force. While the electric field can affect the charges even when they are in rest or in the static state. This is the big difference between the control by electric field and the magnetic field.

Coming to the magnetic materials they contain uncompensated electron spins and so they could be magnetized by the application of magnetic field. Therefore they are used to store data in magnetic domains. The hard disc data storage depends on permanent magnetization of the magnetic domains in magnetic materials. The writing is accomplished by electric current pulse and the reading is accomplished the induction effect.

With the introduction of diluted magnetic semiconductors one would like to produce spintronic devices based on controlling the electron spins rather than electronic charges inn the conventional electronic devices. Such devices is expected to have advantages over the conventional devices as

Spintronic devices offer the possibility of enhanced functionality, higher speed, and reduced power consumption. This is because the spin is resulting from electron circulating on its own axes. So, it can be considered as microscopic current loop that represents a quantum magnet and thereby readily storing a bit of information. So, by controlling the number and the orientation of the spin one can affect amplification switching and storing signals.

Best wishes