Spintronics Community Forum

What new part(s) would you like the most?

New Parts/Modifications
#41

Turns out it’s actually extremely easy to make certain types of charge-controlled memristors in spintronics just by using a pair of noncircular gears. The torque ratio (which changes the effective resistance of the resistor) varies as a function of gear position, which is coupled to length of chain aka spintronics charge. So if one of the noncircular gears is hooked up to a regular resistor, the other noncircular gear displays memristance. The downside of this is that with gears, the effective resistance as a function of charge can vary only a few-fold, as opposed to hundreds or thousands fold like is required for certain applications of memristors. You could also chain several noncircular gears together to get a greater peak ratio, but that probably comes with some problems in real life use.

The idea of noncircular gears also made me consider how to describe just the gears themselves, without necessarily linking one side to a resistor to make a memristor. I tried searching online to see if the framework for this has been established before but I didn’t find anything. I would call it a memformer, because it is analogous to a transformer in the same way a memristor is analogous to a resistor. In a transformer, restrictions are imposed on the relationship between V1 and V2, as well as I1 and I2. In a memformer, restrictions are imposed on the relationship between Φ1 and Φ2, as well as between Q1 and Q2.

Exactly as you would expect logically from the spintronics circuit, an ideal memristor in electronics could just as well be described by a memformer where one port is connected to a regular resistor. The only problem is figuring out how to actually make a practical memformer in electronics :grin:. Good thing it’s easy with spintronics though.

#42

One of the fun consequences of spintronics is that in addition to coming up with spintronic equivalents of electronic devices, you can also think of some arbitrary mechanical device and try to figure out what the electronic equivalent is.

For example, a crank with a spring attached to the piston behaves as a nonlinear capacitor. The voltage varies periodically as a function of Q, and can become negative when the spring is releasing energy back into the circuit.

#43

A component that makes it easier to create a turing machine could be useful.

It could be the flipflop bit - like the transistor but where the spring pushes the gate away from the middle so it will stay either open or closed.

Luxury version:
like the suggested toggle switch by AverageHuman but with a gate at level 2 (and a spring that pushes the gate away from the middle position). (If the gate is true it opens level 3 and closes level 1 if the gate is false the opposite happens).

#44

Hello,

This may have been already proposed, but a 3-way switch could be interesting.

Regards
Stephane

#45

A moving led powered by spin energy.

#46

The limiting factor is the number of colors neded for every component

#47

A varicap or a varactor would be nice to have. It is possible to make it but to make it the quirky behavier of the junction (the midle,top - spin)

#48

A braker might be made with 3 ball bearings like in the inductor but the ball bearings are on springs so when a fast current pases thue it the ball bearing would fly out and be cached by a stoper that then stops the current and it could triger a swich that then you can reset.

#49

A lamp: perhaps you could arrange to have a piezoelectric disc scrape against a disc of bumps similar to the way the ammeter works. That might be enough to light an LED, and it would still be very mechanical. Here’s a simple example on YouTube.

Or maybe the chains themselves could somehow rub against a piezoelectric element to generate power and that could illustrate the electrons coursing through a filament to create light.

#50

Wow, Spintronics is great! I have an idea for another part: A visual ammeter that uses the principles of a speedometer. According to Wikipedia, an analog speedometer can be made by placing a rotating permanent magnet near an aluminum disc. As the magnet rotates, it creates eddy currents in the aluminum disc, which sets the aluminum up as an electromagnet, which then finally gets dragged along by the magnet. The aluminum disk can be attached to a needle which shows the “speed”, but in our case, the “amps”. The needle/aluminum disc would need to be attached to a fine spring which would constantly pull it back to 0.