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The company has been highlighting its work for more advanced 'spintronic' devices. These use the quantum mechanical property of an electron's spin, which is considered to be 'up' or 'down', as well as its electrical charge. Potentially, it will be a way of escaping the limits of microelectronics.

Specifically, the Almaden Centre and Stanford University have formed the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center (dubbed SpinAps, for short). Both parties have experience of researching this field, and IBM is certainly bullish about

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its potential: 'SpinAps researchers will work to create breakthroughs that could revolutionise the electronics industry, just as the transistor did 50 years ago,' said Robert Morris, Almaden Lab Director.

Commercial products, however, are not expected to appear for another five years. But the new devices anticipated include reconfigurable logic devices, room-temperature superconductors and, significantly, quantum computers.

In more technical detail, this is how IBM summarises the technology: 'By combining a spin-polarising structure - which can filter out electrons with only one spin orientation - with a semiconductor structure to create novel two- and three-terminal spintronics devices, [researchers] have begun mapping out new technologies such as spin transistors and magnetic tunnelling transistors (MTTs).'

One practical example already demonstrated by the researchers is the driving of a 'multiple quantum well (LED)' with spin polarised electrons generated from a magnetic tunnelling transistor.

You can find more information about Spintronics on the IBM Almaden Research Centre website.