Semiconducting nanostructures—materials for spintronics

Abstract

Nanoscience, the interdisciplinary science that draws on physics, chemistry, biology and computational mathematics, is still in its infancy. Control and manipulation on a nanometric scale allows the fabrication of nanostructures, the properties of which are mainly determined by quantum mechanics and differ considerably from those of the familiar crystalline state. Nanostructures constructed from inorganic solids such as semiconductors have new electronic and optical properties due to their size and quantization effects.1,2 The quantization effects reflect the fundamental characteristics of structures as soon as their size falls below a certain limit.