Search

This article aims at giving a general presentation of spintronics, an important field of research developing today along many new directions in physics of condensed matter. We tried to present simply the physical phenomena involved in spintronics -- no equations but many schematics. We also described the applications of spintronics, those of today and those expected to have an important impact on the next developments of the information and communication technologies.

The discovery that a spin polarized current can exert a large torque on a ferromagnet through a transfusion of spin angular momentum, offers a new way to control a magnetization by simple current injection, without the help of an applied external field. Spin transfer can be used to induce magnetization reversals and oscillations, or to control the position of a magnetic domain wall. In this review, we focus on this last mechanism, which is today the subject of an extensive research, both because the microscopic details for its origin are still debated, but also because promising applications are at stake for non-volatile magnetic memories.