Controlling magnetic spin with electric fields

Spintronics is a field of physics that studies the spin of electrons, an intrinsic type of magnetism that many elementary particles have. The field of spintronics has given rise to technological concepts of "spintronic devices," which would run on electron spins, rather than their charge, used by traditional electronics.

In order to build programmable spintronic devices we first need to be able to manipulate spins in certain materials. So far, this has been done with magnetic fields, which are not easy to integrate into everyday applications.