SFF QuSpin's Primary Investigators from May, 2023. From left: Asle Sudbø, Arne Brataas, Hendrik Bentmann and Jacob Linder.

QuSpin - SFF Center of Excellence

The QuSpin research center is part of the Department of Physics, at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), in Trondheim, Norway.

The research center carries responsibility in providing the resources and space for international researchers, to delve into and unravel the beautiful complexities of condensed matter physics to further our understanding and control of quantum physics in the pursuit for future innovations.

To innovate in the field of Spintronics the center will, throughout the next ten years, be receiving part of the 1.5 billion Norwegian Kroner which will be funding all the Centers of Excellence.

By the end of 2021, the center developed into the more than sixty member strong team with members from thirteen different countries. QuSpin now has  nine permanent professors and associate professors, two senior researchers, four postdocs, twenty-four Ph.D students, eighteen master students and one administrator.

QuSpin being an international research center, values having a highly professional international advisory board of researchers, as well as an experienced board with senior researchers from NTNU.

In bringing together Norwegian experts with their international counterparts, the center is putting Norway squarely on the forefront of quantum spintronics research. In turn, our research will enable innovative applications.

The SFF QuSpin's primary investigators from 2017.  From left: Jacob Linder, Asle Sudbø, Arne Brataas, Asle Sudbø and Justin Wells.

Our vision is to trigger a revolution in low-power information and communication technologies in an energy-efficient society

A motivation is the usage statistics behind Apple, Google, YouTube, Netflix, and data mining for Bitcoin, as a few examples data transfer,and storage needs into a staggering amount. Followed by their continuously increased energy consumption needs, new ways to handle this efficiently is pressingly needed.

QuSpin's research adresses the fundamental challenge of power consumption and heat generation as electronic devices scale to quantum scales. By moving the frontier of our knowledge in basic research, we want to enable low-power information and communication technologies in a sustainable society for future generations.

Our goal through our research, and with partners across the world, is to harness new possibilities in how we understand and utilize the electron. We hypothesize that the waste of energy in conventional electronics can be circumvented by utilizing the dynamics of quantum entities other than the electron charge.

QuSpin´s objective is to develop the basic science that uses quantum entities such as the electron spin as information carriers in radically different ways. We aim at groundbreaking basic research that is crucial to the development of fast, high-capacity, material systems and tools for smaller and more power-efficient electronic devices. In turn, new knowledge can be carried forward by other fields to advance data and devices with greater efficiency.

Our research will contribute to the unraveling of quantum mysteries and the discovery of new phenomena. We believe that data transport and storage, and electronic device energy consumption can be revolutionized on a quantum scale through solutions on a nano level utilizing new phenomena in new materials, material combinations, and processes.

Our focus is to develop frontier knowledge in both theoretical and experimental disciplines. Nanoscale engineering facilitates the creation of new materials and material combinations where the electron spin and other quantum variables behave and can be controlled in new ways. 

QuSpin will develop new concepts for the utilization of spin and pseudo-spin quantum states in low-dissipation systems. Our aim is to control these states electrically in innovative nanostructured combinations of magnetic insulators, topological insulators, and superconductors.

We have two labs with advanced equipment. We want to be able to verify the theoretical models through experiment, as well as growing new materials with unprecedented and superior properties for transport of electric signals across longer distances. The synergetic interplay between theoretical developments and experiments will open new doors for the understanding and utilization of the bizarre nature of quantum physics in devices.

One of the breakthroughs, covered in our Nature article, and once considered a near impossibility, is the passing of a spin current through hematite, the most common ingredient in rust, an antiferromagnetic insulator, and to have it re-emerge into another metal. Arne Brataas further elaborates, “This is far in the field of nanoelectronics. The research opens the door to the new use of antiferromagnetic insulators in spintronics and electronics with very little energy loss.”